Netbeans for PHP gets an enthusiastically positive review

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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 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 :)

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.

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

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.

Plus the jVi plugin gives you some excellent Vi integration.