

Netbeans for PHP gets an enthusiastically positive review - dxjones
http://unseen.ws/2009/03/netbeans-for-php-ftw/

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juliusdavies
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Netbeans for PHP FTW

I ran across a post a while back talking about how Netbeans now has PHP
support. My first thought since I had never used it, and the name makes no
bones about it’s target language, was that this must just be some gimmick
aimed at Java devs to make it comfortable for them to slide over to other
languages. The world already had one bloated, slow, Javaesque IDE that could
do PHP…. Eclipse…. So why make another?

Curiosity got the better of me after hearing about some of the great stuff
they were baking into the latest version. So I downloaded the 6.7 M2 PHP
version and have been using it exclusively for the last week. Boy were my
initial reactions dead wrong. This thing absolutely rocks for PHP development.
It actually feels like and IDE built for PHP and not at all like PHP stuffed
into a Java IDE (like Eclipse does). Its fast and packed with features. Some
of the best features are not even the PHP ones. The HTML, CSS, JS, and SVN
support all seem top notch as well (something sometimes lacking in PHP focused
IDEs). The only sucky thing about it so far has been it’s name. If any one is
listening, please change the name to something that will not scare off non
java-heads from trying this awesome IDE.

There is even a blog for the Netbeans for PHP.

I’ve used quite a large number of IDEs and editors over the years for my PHP
hacking. I’m not talking fired it up and made a bogus sample page, I’m talking
using for months at a time to write real world projects. Here is a quick
rundown of some of my past PHP hacking tools of choice to give a perspective
of where I’m coming from on this topic (these are in chronological):

* Textpad

I was n00b at one point :)

* Vim

Just too lacking in features for my taste, but still use for server side
hacking and locally for quickly popping open a file. Though I usually use
MacVim these days.

* Dreamweaver

When I was still a bit wet behind the ears and not as hard core on the server
side this helped to make me more productive with client side coding and was
sufficient for my server side needs (especially since I was also doing
ColdFusion work at that time).

* PHPEdit

Back when this was free and I needed something more robust than Dreamweaver
for PHP coding this fit the bill quite nice.

* Eclipse

Yes, I have actually used this quite a bit. At one point I was juggling lots
of projects in lots of different languages at the same (PHP, ColdFusion,
Python, bash, MySQL, XML, …) and wanted a way to streamline my workflow.
Eclipse got the job done. It felt totally half baked and was full of bizarre
Java language and concepts, but I was able find pluggins for everything I
wanted it to do and it worked pretty well.

* Zend Studio <= 5 (before it sucked ass)

Once I was able to focus on strictly a LAMP environment I started looking for
something more suitable. I ran across Zend Studio and the wonders of server
side debugging in PHP and I was hooked. I used this IDE for almost 3 years and
loved it (it’s non PHP support was a bit weak but…)

* Zend Studio 6 (when it sucked ass)

With version 6 of Zend Studio that decided to turn it into Zend Studio for
Eclipse. I’ve never seen such a colossal step backwards for a piece of
software (with the possible exception of Windows Vista). It didn’t support
half the features it had in previous versions. The old studios was fairly
lean, but the new one came with all the Eclipse bloat and could barely get off
the ground with the main project I was working on at the time. Even though I
could sluggishly code… I could not use the debugger without the thing
crashing. The love affair with Zend Studio was over and was time to move on.

* Komodo

I really like Komodo. It was my ZendStudio rebound, and is more or less still
my IDE of choice until I burn NetBeans in a little more. I appreciate its
support for multiple languages (use it for Python/Django on the Smoron
project) and the javascript debugger. Not exactly sure how I put this… its
good and functional but doesn’t exactly have a huge WOW factor.

* NetBeans

Not sure if it is because its the “new” thing for me, or if it is because it
is really that good. But I’m currently WOWed :)

~~~
bobbyi
What "features" is vim missing that you use for php?

~~~
piramida
Heh bugged me too, I hear this statement often and it's coming from people who
believe vim is only about 'i' and ':w'. vim has quite a steep learning curve,
especially comparing to TextMate, but feature-wise it's all these editors and
more.

------
patio11
It is also pretty good for Ruby on Rails coding, and getting better.

Ruby parsing is pain and a half, particularly for half-written Ruby code, but
if you type something like

validates_(hit your autocompletion key)

in a controller you'll get a list of all the built in validations plus any you
added which are in scope, and if you do something like

validates_acceptance_of (hit your autocompletion key) it will even tell you
what all those wonderful damnable optional parameters are. It also saved my
bacon once this weekend for

render :action => whatever, :layout => nil , which actually rendered the
layout for quite some time until I backed out the "=> nil" and was told by
autocomplete that what I really wanted was "=> false".

~~~
curej
Netbeans is my favorite Ruby editor, much to my own surprise. One thing I
don't like, though, is how much extraneous autocomplete information it
provides. If I'm in a controller and type the name of a model object and then
type period, it shows a dizzying dropdown list of thousands of methods,
including several hundred different versions of the "new" method. Maybe it's
just me.

------
mdasen
I used to be a TextMate/Vim person, but NetBeans just has some really nice
abilities.

It integrates so well with version control systems. The auto-complete isn't
what I'd like it to be for Ruby, but seems better for other languages. It will
run your program in NetBeans which makes it easy to fire up a development
server without another window. It will handle lots of tasks like plugin
management or rake tasks. Oh, and the refactor browser - I don't know how I
ever renamed things without it.

Now, it's absolutely ugly (at least on OS X), but it's relatively straight
forward which I can't say for Eclipse. It might not be your cup of tea, but at
the price of free, it's worth seeing if an IDE's tools such as its ability to
spot parse errors, code completion, versioning integration, etc. will help you
be more productive/happy.

~~~
pilif
the latest beta version isn't ugly under OS X any more. My concerns about line
endings and trailing whitespace (see other comment) still keep me off using
this though.

------
dforbin
I stumbled onto using Netbeans for PHP a few months ago while doing some Java
work. I use it almost exclusively for PHP now (I also use geany for quick
edits). While it's not quite as slick as the Java support, it is a world
better than anything else I've used. Also the subversion and mercurial
integration kicks ass.

Hope oracle continues to support development, but if not, we have the source.

------
Griever
I've been using Netbeans for PHP for about 6-months exclusively now and I can
say I too am extremely impressed with its speed, functionality, and most
importantly, reliability.

Zend Studio was the last IDE I used before this, and I was pretty upset with
what I found. Not only was it sluggish, but it would randomly crash on me,
causing me to lose some of my work.

Netbeans FTW

------
pilif
as long as Netbeans does not let me specify the line ending style of newly
created files and does not provide me with an option to remove trailing
whitespace on save, it's just not usable for my purposes.

Where I work, we have a very strict policy concerning these two things -
actually it was me to formulate that policy in the first place, because having
strict line endings makes the codebase look ever so cleaner.

Having clean line endings really helps with applying patches.

Not having options to fix these two aspects is just unprofessional - no matter
how good the rest of the editor might be.

------
bkudria
Can anyone share their experiences with coding PHP in Emacs?

------
teilo
Wake me up when it does Python. Oh, and it would need mercurial support too.

Until then, I'll stick with Textmate. (Already tried Eclipse. Hated it.)

~~~
dforbin
Wake up, it's supported both at least since 6.5. I've used mercurial in
netbeans for several months and it works great.

~~~
teilo
Ah. That's it. My Bad. I was looking at their download bundles, and just
assumed that was everything. PHP and Ruby are listed, but Python is not:

<http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/index.html>

