(This is a very very old page.)
Integrated Development Environments (for linux that is...)
It's all about Netbeans. As you read through my experiences with various IDEs / Editors you will see why it is my preferred choice. Of course if you have to do .NET development Microsoft's Visual Studio is excellent and it's your only choice... ...except maybe for mono's IDE and .NET framework. I digress...
Eclipse for C++ and PHP (with plugins)
Initially I used Eclipse. My attempts to use Netbeans 5 met with little enthusiasm and success. Eclipse was a promising C++ and PHP IDE; although there were issues. Some of which caused me much grief. For example: loosing my entire workspace settings for apparently no valid reason. Since I was working on various PHP projects, I did not have time to troubleshoot the issues and try to understand the root causes. Instead I had to look for alternatives.
Aptana (Eclipse for PHP)
Then I found Aptana. Aptana 1.2 was a brilliant IDE and although it suffered from similar issues as Eclipse, it's integrated support of PHP debugging and coding was quite amazing and made up for the above mentioned issues. It was the tool of choice. Alas version 2 came out which essentially reverted me to using Eclipse with the normal PHP plugin. I'm sure if I spent enough time tweaking my install, I could have perfected a great PHP IDE. Time was not on my side so I gave it up.
VI / KWRITE
VI is an excellent editor on Linux/Unix systems. It's the editor I use for most simple editing. I use it often to write simple tests in C++, small edits in PHP or other code files, and a wide variety of other things. From modifying system files to personal documents, VI has never let me down.
KWRITE. It's small, elegant, fast, simple, and has great syntax highlighting. It's not an IDE, but all of the mentioned features make it a simple editor of choice. You can edit almost all of your code files with it, or use it for general editing instead of VI if you don't like command line oriented editors.
EMACS?
Emacs is an amazing system, but it's from a different generation for different purposes. When computers had 1mb of RAM or less, Emacs was one of the best editors around. Unfortunately my system has 4gb of RAM and I need to use that RAM in order to save time, hence my quest for an All Powerful IDE. The learning curve is a bit steep so you need to take a bit of time to become familiar with it. Although I did managed to do quite a bit of editing, I found that it serve the purpose I needed.
Netbeans 6.8, 6.9, 6.9.1, 7.0
After trying out Netbeans 6.6 in an attempt to move away from Eclipse, I found they had made huge improvements from version 5. Sun had opened up Java and made it completely available to the Open Source community. Netbeans 6.6 and 6.8 therefore came bundled with all that was required to do full fledged Java EE development. They didn't stop there: I was looking for a PHP editor. Netbeans 6.6 integrated support for PHP; syntax highlighting, parsing, code completion, debugging, etc... Of course it still had support for C++, Java SwingBuilder, and all the other tools that it had amassed over time.
It is now a fantastic tool which is further maturing as it evolves into 6.9.1 and eventually version 7.0.
Integrated Development Environments (for linux that is...)
It's all about Netbeans. As you read through my experiences with various IDEs / Editors you will see why it is my preferred choice. Of course if you have to do .NET development Microsoft's Visual Studio is excellent and it's your only choice... ...except maybe for mono's IDE and .NET framework. I digress...
Eclipse for C++ and PHP (with plugins)
Initially I used Eclipse. My attempts to use Netbeans 5 met with little enthusiasm and success. Eclipse was a promising C++ and PHP IDE; although there were issues. Some of which caused me much grief. For example: loosing my entire workspace settings for apparently no valid reason. Since I was working on various PHP projects, I did not have time to troubleshoot the issues and try to understand the root causes. Instead I had to look for alternatives.
Aptana (Eclipse for PHP)
Then I found Aptana. Aptana 1.2 was a brilliant IDE and although it suffered from similar issues as Eclipse, it's integrated support of PHP debugging and coding was quite amazing and made up for the above mentioned issues. It was the tool of choice. Alas version 2 came out which essentially reverted me to using Eclipse with the normal PHP plugin. I'm sure if I spent enough time tweaking my install, I could have perfected a great PHP IDE. Time was not on my side so I gave it up.
VI / KWRITE
VI is an excellent editor on Linux/Unix systems. It's the editor I use for most simple editing. I use it often to write simple tests in C++, small edits in PHP or other code files, and a wide variety of other things. From modifying system files to personal documents, VI has never let me down.
KWRITE. It's small, elegant, fast, simple, and has great syntax highlighting. It's not an IDE, but all of the mentioned features make it a simple editor of choice. You can edit almost all of your code files with it, or use it for general editing instead of VI if you don't like command line oriented editors.
EMACS?
Emacs is an amazing system, but it's from a different generation for different purposes. When computers had 1mb of RAM or less, Emacs was one of the best editors around. Unfortunately my system has 4gb of RAM and I need to use that RAM in order to save time, hence my quest for an All Powerful IDE. The learning curve is a bit steep so you need to take a bit of time to become familiar with it. Although I did managed to do quite a bit of editing, I found that it serve the purpose I needed.
Netbeans 6.8, 6.9, 6.9.1, 7.0
After trying out Netbeans 6.6 in an attempt to move away from Eclipse, I found they had made huge improvements from version 5. Sun had opened up Java and made it completely available to the Open Source community. Netbeans 6.6 and 6.8 therefore came bundled with all that was required to do full fledged Java EE development. They didn't stop there: I was looking for a PHP editor. Netbeans 6.6 integrated support for PHP; syntax highlighting, parsing, code completion, debugging, etc... Of course it still had support for C++, Java SwingBuilder, and all the other tools that it had amassed over time.
It is now a fantastic tool which is further maturing as it evolves into 6.9.1 and eventually version 7.0.
