testIDE Battle
If you read my blog you know about my article on Linux.com where I review Zend Studio. I stand behind my feelings that Zend is a great piece of software, but I feel for client side applications there are better IDEs. I have used a number of IDEs over the years and today I really explorer one that has become popular, Aptana. Aptana is referred to as the Web 2.0 IDE and for good reason. The code completion in Aptana is excellent and this includes Javascript, Dojo library, Prototype, Yahoo UI, and a number of other popular libraries. I have used NVU and hated it, it lacked too many features. Dreamweaver drives me crazy, and I’m sure part of that is that I do not have much experience with it, but it seems like the time it takes to set a style for a div or span or any element just takes too long. If you are a fast typer and know the code you can accomplish a number of the tasks much faster than typing the names and such with one hand and using your mouse to change cells with the other. I know Dreamweaver is a very powerful piece of software and it helps a great number of people do their job, but personally I can’t deal with it.
I would classify Aptana as a front end IDE, not that it cannot handle PHP, but it lacks code completion for PHP code. When I design my layouts I first open Photoshop to create the design, cut it in ImageReady and make the HTML layout and validate the code. I will then move to the backend. With Aptana’s awesome code completion for HTML, Javascript and a large number of AJAX libraries my front end development productivity will greatly increase. I have not spent the time to memorize Javascript so the code completion is very handy for me. I have been against code completion for a long time because for a lot of people it just makes them lazy, especially the new programmers. It does however improve productivity, so I feel as long as you do not start losing the knowledge of the functions and classes it is a good thing to use. When my friend Josh decided to learn HTML he wanted to use Dreamweaver and was so excited about how it completed the code for him. His philosophy has been work smarter not harder, which is good in some cases, but when you can find yourself in situations where you don’t have the opportunity to use something that writes the code you will find yourself in deep shit. When I first started web design back in 2000 I used Frontpage, yeah I know you don’t have to say it. When I move to Florida I got a job and they said that I had to do it all by hand, no WYSIWYG. I found myself in a situation where I was forced to learn it and I have been so thankful for that.
If you are a designer that doesn’t want that hefty license fee of Dreamweaver and you need a powerful IDE, but can do without the WYSIWYG download Aptana.
