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February User Group :: PHP IDE Bake-Off

Feb '09 11 Wed 6:30 PM
Location
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Estimated attendance
 19  people attended.
2.00 2.007

Why use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)? How will an IDE improve your productivity? What are some common features of popular IDE's? Which IDE's are Cross-Platform compatible? Which IDE's are Open Source? Please join BostonPHP and Jesse Burns when he discusses his reasons to move from a simple text editor to a PHP/Web development IDE, and the process he went through to make that decision.

This presentation will focus on Cross-Platform Open Source IDE's covering some common features that most IDE's include such as:

* Text Highlighting
* Code Completion
* Code Folding
* Code Templates and
* Integrated Version Control Clients to name a few.

We will also discuss how IDE's can improve programmer and team development. Here is a list of some of the IDE's we will talk about:

* Eclipse with the PDT package PHPEclipse
* Aptana
* Netbeans
* jEdit


Whether you are a hobbyist PHP developer, an independent contractor or you are member of a team of developers, there is a fit for you. There are many IDE's to choose from, but which fits your development cycle the best? After this presentation, you should have enough information to decide which IDE is the best fit for you.

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Talk about this Meetup

  • Posted Feb 25, 2009 1:09 PM
    Former Member
    Here is a great round up of the big php IDE's http://www.smashingmagazine...
  • Mark Withington
    Posted Feb 18, 2009 8:28 AM
    Mark Withington
    Founder, acting president & benevolent dictator of BostonPHP.org
    Thanks for everyone's comments. Unfortunately, this was the "perfect storm" for Jesse: client blow-up; forgot his presentation note in the ensuing rush to get here; first time presenting. I want to thank him for soldiering on. From your comments and the attendance level, it looks like this is still a topic that people would like to hear about, and therefore, I'm reaching out for volunteers to try this one again. I'll gladly cover Zend Studio if others want cover their favorites.
  • Dr. David K. Patterson
    Posted Feb 17, 2009 11:35 PM
    Dr. David K. Patterson
    Well, I was disappointed. The talk was not up to the normal standard I have come to expect from thr Boston PHP group. The meeting was poorly managed, especially from a time perspective. The speaker knew about the PHP IDEs but gave no definitive information of the value of using a PHP IDE for development. The talk was rambling and not well organized. It left me saying to myself - "And which IDEs are the better one to use and why". I guess I will have to look at them myself.
  • Posted Feb 12, 2009 6:30 PM
    Douglas Ross
    I was there but not in the official list (to the right-->). The topic was a great one and the presenter missed opportunities to engage the audience. I found what works for me is to ask people to engage in conversation rather than showing what I don't know. For example, we might have said how many people are intrested in seeing how to set up debugging IDE x? If the whole group is really interested in that, then as a group exercise together we could have "learned" how to hook up debugging.
  • Mark Withington
    Posted Feb 12, 2009 12:38 PM
    Mark Withington
    Founder, acting president & benevolent dictator of BostonPHP.org
    I echo Michael's thoughts. The strength of open source comes from the community's willingness to participate. As we mentioned in the group's intro, "BostonPHP.org are PHPeople ranging from newbie-to-techie. We discourage RTFM attitudes and encourage you to come see what PHP (and open source) is all about." Hope to see you next time....perhaps at the podium
  • Michael Bourque
    Posted Feb 12, 2009 10:52 AM
    Michael Bourque
    Organizer
    As someone who has presented at BostonPHP several times, I can tell you it's always a great learning experience. While I do agree that that meeting could have been better, I also think that it is what you make of it. There was a lot of expertise in the room, and each of us should commit to step up the podium and share whatever experiences you can share. I will be hosting another "Show us your stuff" night where we invite YOU to come up from the audience and show what you've done with PHP.
  • February User Group :: PHP IDE Bake-Off happened on February 11, 2009 6:30 PM
  • Posted Feb 6, 2009 3:21 PM
    Former Member
    I'm really interested in an IDE that facilitates PHP debugging ... I hope our speakers will spend some time talking about how to set that up.

Who attended?

  • 19 attendees
    • “ I expected the theme for the meeting to be a comparison of IDEs, yet there was little comparison done. 50% of the meeting was about generalities of which features make up an Integrated Desktop Environment (IDE) and could have been skipped in its entirety. 40% was about commonalities among PHP IDEs such as how they all support php editing. The only comparison that was really done was to compare the php editor jEdit (NOT an IDE) and the real IDEs. I would have titled this presentation "Why should PHP developers choose an IDE?" I would really like to see a true bake-off between IDEs. I have compared some basic features of a few IDEs, but my use of php is limited to handling soap requests. My debugging environment requires setting breakpoints and waiting for external triggers. xdebug handles my needs, but very poorly. Phpeclipse is no where near the sophistication of java+eclipse. Am I just using it wrong or is there something great out there? --Duane ”
    • “ Presenter was not prepared or qualified in the subject. I'm sure this is not typical of these meetups, however. ”
    • “ My feelings are a little mixed. I enjoyed the discussion that occurred prior to the presenter's arrival. However, I didn't get as much out of the presentation as I expected. It is important to recognize that I'm quite likely the only non-developer in the group. My coding skills are all self taught and my experience is limited to tools written for my own purposes as a network engineer. Having said that I was surprised to find that the material presented seemed almost rudimentary to me. This could have been due to the fact that the presenter experienced issues that may have presented his ability to deliver the material as he would have liked. Given that this was my first meeting I don't believe this is indicative of the group in general. ”
    • “ It was great the presenter volunteered to present but I think he should have been better prepared. Many, and if not, most people in the room were more familiar with the IDEs. It would have been better to just play demo screen casts from Aptana's web site and others. It's okay if the presenter is not the most knowledgeable about a topic in a room. But he should be better prepared and he should also engage the audience in discussion so that other expert advice can be shared/extracted. If we were to do this topic again, perhaps it would be better to have multiple presenters - each presenting on a specific IDE or combination of tools they use in development. Then a facilitator could help the audience summarize a comparison of what we saw. ”
    • Founder, acting president & benevolent dictator of BostonPHP.org