Comments on: How to Pick the Perfect Programming Editor

By: Dorsey

Dorsey — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:47:52 +0000

I switched from jEdit to NetBeans 6.5 about six months ago, and haven’t looked back. For all the VS-lovers out there: no, it’s not as sophisticated, but it offers a lot of bank for the buck (and the bucks are zero, because it’s free). What I really like is that I don’t have to use all the features or all of the supported languages, but they’re there when I need them.

By: Oscar

Oscar — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:28:55 +0000

If you’re PHP coder, so NetBeans IDE will be your choice.

By: Dougydoe

Dougydoe — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:36:31 +0000

Very insightful article. I’ve used Visual Studio and I think its the way to go for .NET development. I also use Dreamweaver for My FrontEnd Development

I’m relatively new to PHP so I’ve used Dreamweaver again for a while. I have recently been trying out Netbeans for PHP development and looks good.

Anyone aware of the ideal PHP editor out there? I mean the Freeware ones.

Thanks

By: rozner

rozner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:41:47 +0000

I’m a big fan of Eclipse, use it for Java and PHP development. For me the most important things are keyboard shortcuts and the auto complete. The Java autocomplete with Eclipse is perfect, and it has customizable keyboard shortcuts. For PHP I’ve used both PHP Eclipse and the PDT plugin. I find the PDT plugin has better autocomplete but the interface in general is slower than PHP Eclipse.

My only problem with Eclipse is that it sucks for single file editing, as you do need to create a whole project just for that. So if I need to edit just one file or make a quick change I use Editplus. It’s got syntax highlighted, also has an integrated FTP client (which has been helpful before although I don’t use it much anymore).

I’ve used Visual Studio as well for some .NET projects and I’m not complaining, it’s a pretty solid IDE, the intellisense works quite well.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:36:23 +0000

Netbeans for PHP has made me happy!! Otherwise I would say Visual Studio for ASP.NET is the best editor around. Even the Visual Web Developer edition is a good editor. A lot better than the Dreamweaver crap.. I don’t know what you’re really going to do with Dreamweaver – it’s more too people who hardly can’t HTML. The javascript autocomplete support is not good, but the JS support in VS is a lot better.

By: elemental70

elemental70 — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:43:13 +0000

I always vote for Aptana. Everything you could need, always updated and FREE. http://www.aptana.com

By: Craig Buckler

Craig Buckler — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:00:03 +0000

@justbn_me I agree - most built-in S/FTP solutions are quite poor. Notepad++ FTP-Synchronize plugin works well, but that's because it allows you to open remote files as if they were local. It's handy for quick and dirty emergency updates. ExpanDrive looks interesting. A couple of other (untested) solutions: Web-Host-Uploader and Rightload. Perhaps the easiest and quickest solution is to update via SVN (or whichever source control system you're using). Unfortunately, not all ISPs offer the SVN client on their systems.

By: moormaRog

moormaRog — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:04:53 +0000

Many thanks for support how I can thank you?

By: justbn_me

justbn_me — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:51:40 +0000

Built in FTP/SFTP : No thanks. I love Aptana but find the built in SFTP (pro only) useless. It’s just too slow. The views aren’t customizable, etc. Unfortunately, Aptana also doesn’t play well with external SFTP/FTP clients. Argh.

However, I have the best solution. Use ExpanDrive. It’s an awesome SFTP service that mounts as a local drive. Now, you can open all your remote files in Aptana or even use them as part of a project.

I’d prefer that Aptana concentrate less on built-in features and just have a rock solid IDE. Let us use our own preferred tools for source control (git) and file management.

By: uni_boy

uni_boy — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:38:51 +0000

This is interesting to me because I like to hear how other developers do what they do.

I still use Dreamweaver, because it has all the features I need and works seamlessly with Drupal. I use the built-in FTP all the time. It has all the “must-have” features listed above, and has a great Drupal plugin in that adds native support for Drupal extensions and API.

I also like its CSS management and its seamless Fireworks/Flash integration. There’s a lot of benefits to its being an Adobe product.

I just feel like with Dreamweaver, I have to click less. The only disadvantage I can see is carrying the indignity of using a fairly ‘uncool’ code editor. I try to do so gracefully.

I’ve looked at Eclipse just briefly, I guess mostly in the context of Flex Builder. It seems great, but overkill for what I need as a PHP/MySQL developer. Similarly for Kimodo, which is still sitting on my desktop, more or less unused.