NYCPHP Meetup

[inforequest]

Thanks in advance for any experience-based comments or suggestions.

I bought Zend Studio Pro at version 3, and never really used it. I 
encountered some annoyances on install (like what seemed to be a hang 
during install, which turned out to be a hidden console window awaiting 
a key press to continue) and difficulty getting the debugger to work 
properly with the server (turned out to be problems with the GUI 
labeling... we worked our way to success eventually). In the end the 
client/server aspects from the Windows client to a Linux server were a 
hassle. In my experience it was too slow, and not reliable for 
interactive debugging. I never got it to work smoothly from the notebook 
on and off the network. Because of the struggle I never fully adopted 
the client so I admit I didn't give the IDE a good chance to impress me. 
I still have the license for Safeguard (at v3.5) Performance Suite 3.6 
and Studio Pro 3.0 and Encoder 3.5 Plus, according to my Zend account.

Now with PHP 5 pretty widely available to me and all the progress I have 
seen from Zend I want to try again. Sadly, it seems everything I had 
before (still available for use) is not upgradeable to the current 
versions. I hardly see the point in buying it again, especially now that 
it costs even more.

So then there's the trial downloads. Available to try the product -- 
seems a good idea, right?

Experienced as I am (whatever that is), I fully expect that a trial of a 
4.x generation product, installed on my Windows machine, perhaps with 
their Windows enhancer (whatever that is), will muck up my system if I 
decide to use the 3.x product afterwards. You know, blind forward 
compatibility issues and all. Anybody using the 4 or have any hands-on 
experience that would help me out?

I know about the so-called "small business development" plan. Even if I 
qualified for it (gross revenue of $250k/year is hardly a reasonable 
limit for an east coast small business, even during "development") the 
same situation applies. Basically Zend is asking for between $1k and $5k 
*per year* for their product which is not insignificant for an IDE with 
debugger and encoder.

I was a user of NuSphere's PHP-IDE for a while prior to trying Zend 3, 
but I have never found enough bonus to the specialized IDE over UlraEdit 
or Textpad-configured. The debugger is the draw, so if it works well 
enough for me to be productive with it I want to use it.

Anybody care to tell me they *know* the trial versions will be a good 
experience? Or that I should rock on with my 3.x licenses? Or to save my 
time and continue the edit-post-refresh routine and accept that there 
really isn't a decent interactive debugger for the independent web 
developer?

One thinks about PHP certification, which leads to Zend, which suggests 
the IDE (again), which teases with promises of a real debugger and 
server-side toolkit.... is it time to try again?

Thanks again.

-=john andrews