Zend Neon and a better world
I’m still on sick leave. Since I still am and have been alone mostly, I’ve had a lot of time to think, relax and code. I think I really learned a lot; much of which about Zend Studio Neon [insert link]. Finally we’re getting there we’re about to get a really good IDE from PHP.
I have been following the progress of Eclipse based PHP IDEs the last year or so. However I’ve missed a lot of features both in PHP Eclipse and PDT. Since I’ve been working with Java I know how good things can get and which features you don’t want to live without. Zend Neon is bringing a lot of those features into the PHP world. Here follows a few of the ones which I’ve already grown found of:
- Integrated Unit Testing (using PHPUnit).
- Integrated PHPDoc functionality.
- Code Coverage; the ability to see which parts of your code that actually gets executed.
- Understanding of include/require statements; gives you auto-complete and warns if the target doesn’t exist. And let’s not forget “Organize Includes”.
- Really good understanding of the code, taking (major) PHP version into consideration and warns you when you use deprecated functions, or just code sloppy (use a variable before initiation for instance).
The list could go on for a long time, and then I’ve of course not included features deriving from PDT (Neon extends PDT), Eclipse or external Plugins. Those may include auto-complete in PHPDoc comments, type hinting using the same comments, seamless CVS/SVN integration, remote editing and debugging capabilities, BIRT Integration (never used thou), wonderful WSDL editor and a hundred more…
And if you’re not satisfied with something you can always write your own plugin.