

Why PHP and JavaScript IDE's Suck  - edw519
http://blog.jeremymartin.name/2008/05/why-php-and-javascript-ides-suck.html

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jrockway
Dynamic abbreviations ("dabbrev-expand" and "dabbrev-completion") solve the
problem quite nicely 90% of the time. If you keep the documentation open in
another buffer, then it works 99% of the time, as long as you have a clue on
what you're doing.

People seem a little bit too concerned about getting a java-style 100% correct
solution when a 90% solution is nearly as good.

~~~
baha_man
I love Emacs, but I think the lack of 'Intellisense' is one of the few good
reasons to use an IDE over Emacs or Vim. Some people think Intellisense rots
the brain [1], but I can't see anyone ever saying that about eldoc-mode.

[1]
[http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind...](http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html)

~~~
jrockway
lisp-complete-symbol definitely does rob the brain. I've written plenty of
braindead Lisp with its help :) Eldoc is not the same thing, though, since it
just shows some basic documentation _after_ you've remembered the name of the
function. It's a nice "yeah, I _knew_ that was the name" reminder. Finally,
it's easy to "dive deeper" with Lisp, thanks to "describe-function" and
friends. I would definitely not complain about having that for other
languages. (Languages that don't have docstrings are really annoying me these
days. Perl especially.)

Honestly, I use dabbrevs more often than lisp-complete-symbol when writing
lisp. It usually gets me what I want with less typing. (There are a lot of
lisp functions that start with the same prefix, but not as many that I've used
in my editor session. So dabbrev-expand has less to look at, and hence it
usually gives me what I want faster.)

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DanHulton
I absolutely love working in Komodo Edit
(<http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_edit/>). This guy's big complaint
seems to be a lack of Intellisense, but seriously, it's OUT there. You just
have to look beyond Dreamweaver.

In Komodo, I get intellisense, but the damn thing's even smart enough to pick
up if I'm writing javascript inside a <script> tag inside HTML inside a PHP
doc - it pops up the appropriate javascript autocomplete stuff and not the PHP
stuff. It's awesome.

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bluelu
He probably never tried the javascript editor of netbeans.

[http://www.netbeans.org/download/flash/js/javascript_demo.ht...](http://www.netbeans.org/download/flash/js/javascript_demo.html)

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henryw
why would the author use dreamweaver for php? try zend, or phped. for js,
there's aptana. the author is misinformed. that article was a big waste of
time.

