On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 6:08 AM, Tod <listacctc(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Is there an IDE that the MW developer community has
settled on and can
recommend?
There is no magic bullet. :)
In the early days I mostly used fairly lightweight syntax-highlighting
program editors (bbedit on Mac, jedit on Linux/Windows, joe or vim if stuck
in a terminal) and a command line for grep & version control, and that was
Good Enough For Me.
I mostly use Netbeans these days -- like Eclipse it's an open-source
pluggable Java-based IDE mega-framework, but I've found it more stable and
comfortable to use than Eclipse. Its PHP & JavaScript mode does decent
highlighting, it has standard integration with SVN and Git, and it handles
project navigation, autocomplete etc including extracting type information
from doc comment annotations. Most importantly, project-wide search and
replace works and is speedy enough compared to mucking about with find and
grep.
Some folks around the office also use Eclipse. The downside of either of
these is that they're huge apps -- they eat memory for breakfast, and if
they're unstable can be very frustrating. The upside is that they tend to be
very flexible, but much less intimidating than classic Unixy stuff like vim
or emacs.
Others are still very happy with a lighter-weight programming editor:
something in the GUI flavors like TextMate or bbedit (Mac), Kate or gedit
(Linux), or whatever the heck Windows people use.
Some hardcore people use a terminal-based editor like vim or emacs by
choice; the best of these are extremely powerful with syntax & navigation
features though they tend to have a higher learning curve.
The most important things you probably want in a programming environment
are:
* project-wide search & search-and-replace (you will kill yourself playing
with 'grep' without this)
* PHP & JavaScript syntax highlighting (a must)
* quick way to pop around to other files in the project by name/path (even
if just from a command line)
Some folks will care also about:
* version control integration (all I ever use is a 'svn annotate' shortcut!)
* debugger integration (if/when you can actually make it work, AWESOME)
* autocompletion assistance (it's a help but if you can navigate around or
look up help easily, it's not key)
* integration with language & library documentation (if you know your way
around
php.net, no biggie)
-- brion