NYCPHP Meetup

[Paul A Houle]

Ajai Khattri wrote:
>
> Of course, you're ignoring the fact that these have little to do with Java 
> - IDEs exist for PHP too.
>
> Personally, I dislike IDEs but to each their own.
>   
    See,  that's what PHPers,  Pythoners,  Ruby people always say...  I 
did a lot of Java from 1996 to 1999 and then gave up on it for PHP.  
Recently I had to finish a GWT/J2EE app  that somebody else started,  
and Eclipse/Java opened my eyes.

    Eclipse/PHP doesn't do anything vi doesn't do,  except it has two 
buttons you can click on to start and stop your web server.  Woooo...  
I'm so impressed.  All you get from Eclipse/PHP is increased startup 
time.  No wonder why PHPers think Eclipse is worthless,  because 
Eclipse/PHP ~is~ worthless.  Eclipse has seriously damaged it's brand by 
coming out with shovelware products for PHP,  Ruby,  Python,  etc.  They 
really ought to be like the Apple App Store and ban that stuff so people 
realize that Eclipse/Java is cool.

    Eclipse/Java does something different from every other Eclipse/X 
I've seen.  It parses your code,  understands something about it,  and 
helps you.  For instance,  if you write

    objectInstance.AMethodThatDoesNotExist()

    a little symbol appears on the side of the screen:  click on it and 
it will offer you choices:  for instance,  it will correct typos if you 
type something that is almost like an existing method.  You can create 
the method with one click,  or you can change the access level of the 
method if you're not currently allowed to access it.  The UI is good 
enough that it feels like a help,  not a hindrance.  The IDE highlights 
methods and variables that don't get used;  there are at least 20 
different automated refactorings that make changes (like pushing methods 
up & down a class hierarchy or renaming methods) automatically.  Yes,  
you can just click on the definition of a method,  class,  or variable,  
type in a new name,  and it gets changed everywhere...  In seconds,  
without ever making mistakes.  All of that helps compensate for the 
additional artifacts that you need to write Java.

    Eclipse/Java also has a debugger that ~works~.  There are a lot of 
reasons for it,  but I've never been able to build a PHP debugging 
system with a PHP IDE that really works.   No more having debugging 
"echo" statements winding up in production code...

    Visual Studio/C# is maybe 50% as good as Eclipse/Java,  and the 
ReSharper product from JetBrains gets it up to 90%.