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What to look for in an IDE for PHP Development? There are also plugins available to support many other languages and frameworks. The PHP IDE I’ll be covering today, PhpStorm, is for PHP (unsurprisingly given the name 🙃), HTML5/CSS and JavaScript. IDE tools may be specific to a programming language. Since they offer more functionality, they use more resources (memory, CPU) than a code editor or plain text editor. They usually include a code editor with syntax highlighting, a directory listing of files and folders in your project, build automation tools, a debugger, and language autocomplete features. The best part about an IDE is that it allows developers to use one tool instead of three or more, making you that much more efficient as a developer. Depending on the tool, you may get features like autocomplete and syntax highlighting but you’ll certainly need to use it in conjunction with other software.īest for: All developers, developers who like everything in one place, editing someone else’s code or code refactoring. Think Notepad on Windows on nano on the CLI. You’ll have to use addons or plugins to compile and debug your code.Ī text editor is a barebones text manipulation program. You can expect just a text editor with syntax highlighting, minimal language integrations and the option to install addons or plugins to add extra functionality.
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It’ll be your one-stop-shop for web development.Ī code editor can often be suped up to include similar features to an IDE but usually won’t come with those features out-of-the-box. If you already know what you’re interested in, feel free to skip ahead:īut what’s the difference between an IDE, a code editor and a text editor?īefore we get started, here’s a quick overview of what each of these tools are:Īn IDE encompasses the functionality of several tools in one environment (like a database administration tool, a terminal and a debugger) allowing you to write code, compile it and debug it, all under one roof. I then delve deeper into what they are, what to look for and which tool we recommend as your PHP IDE or PHP Editor. That’s why this article was put together through a delicate combination of research and poking and prodding our experienced dev team.īelow I cover the differences between IDEs, code editors and text editors. If you’ve ever taken any amount of time off from coding, you know that things change quickly.
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I then moved on to VS Code but that was over two years ago. When I was actively developing websites, Sublime Text was my go-to editor.
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They each offer different benefits and drawbacks making it confusing to decide which tool you need, and from there, which tool to ultimately use. When building software or websites, you’ll need to use an integrated development environment (IDE), a code editor or if you’re really brave, a text editor.
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