I'm a PHP developer and now I use Notepad++ for code editing, but lately I've been searching for an IDE to ease my work.
I've looked into Eclipse, Aptana Studio and several others, but I'm not really decided, they all look nice enough but a bit complicated. I'm sure it'll all get easy once I get used to it, but I don't want to waste my time.
This is what I'm looking for:
Easy as pie:
Open Eclipse and go to Help-> Software Updates-> Find and Install Select "Search for new features to install" and click "Next" Create a New Remote Site with the following details:
Name: PDT
URL: http://download.eclipse.org/tools/pdt/updates/4.0.1
Get the latest above mentioned URLfrom -
http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/index.html#download
Check the PDT box and click "Next" to start the installation
Hope it helps
I think you're doing things a bit strange.
You already have all your information in an SVN repository, so why not take advantage of that?
You keep a working copy on your computer for development and testing. Save and commit your changes to SVN. On your server, do an SVN export (or checkout, with appropriate server rules to block web access to the .svn folders), and you're sweet!
---------------------- ------------ --------------- | Local Working Copy | <---> | SVN Repo | <---> | Live server | ---------------------- ------------ ---------------
This means you never have to worry about FTP, or have to figure out which files have been changed locally and hence need to be updated.
I use a Singleton ResourceManager class to handle stuff like DB connections and config settings through a whole app:
class ResourceManager {
private static $DB;
private static $Config;
public static function get($resource, $options = false) {
if (property_exists('ResourceManager', $resource)) {
if (empty(self::$$resource)) {
self::_init_resource($resource, $options);
}
if (!empty(self::$$resource)) {
return self::$$resource;
}
}
return null;
}
private static function _init_resource($resource, $options = null) {
if ($resource == 'DB') {
$dsn = 'mysql:host=localhost';
$username = 'my_username';
$password = 'p4ssw0rd';
try {
self::$DB = new PDO($dsn, $username, $password);
} catch (PDOException $e) {
echo 'Connection failed: ' . $e->getMessage();
}
} elseif (class_exists($resource) && property_exists('ResourceManager', $resource)) {
self::$$resource = new $resource($options);
}
}
}
And then in functions / objects / where ever:
function doDBThingy() {
$db = ResourceManager::get('DB');
if ($db) {
$stmt = $db->prepare('SELECT * FROM `table`');
etc...
}
}
I use it to store messages, error messages and warnings, as well as global variables. There's an interesting question here on when to actually use this type of class.
For 'native' BlackBerry app development (i.e. Java app development), there are basically 4 options:
Options 3 and 4 I haven't seen used for a long time, not sure if they're still viable - though I don't see why #4 wouldn't be.
I used #4 for a long time, until RIM put out their plugin. While there are still a lot of problems with it, for me the productivity gains of working with something like Eclipse outweigh them.
So either 1 or 2, with the caveat that you should chose one or the other for your whole team, as they're really not compatible with each other (differences in project structure and how they handle resources). You can move from 1 to 2 easily, but not really the other way around.
Are you sure you're looking for an IDE? The features you're describing, along with the impression of being too complicated that you got from e.g. Aptana, suggest that perhaps all you really want is a good editor with syntax highlighting and integration with some common workflow tools. For this, there are tons of options.
I've used jEdit on several platforms successfully, and that alone puts it above most of the rest (many of the IDEs are cross-platform too, but Aptana and anything Eclipse-based is going to be pretty heavy-weight, if full-featured). jEdit has ready-made plugins for everything on your list, and syntax highlighting for a wide range of languages. You can also bring up a shell in the bottom of your window, invoke scripts from within the editor, and so forth. It's not perfect (the UI is better than most Java UIs, but not perfect yet I don't think), but I've had good luck with it, and it'll be a hell of a lot simpler than Aptana/Eclipse.
That said, I do like Aptana quite a bit for web development, it does a lot of the grunt work for you once you're over the learning curve.