I am looking for anyone out there using Zend Studio for development. I am particularly interested in what you like about it, how it has improved your work, etc. I want to know what you love about it.... what you hate about it..... was it worth the money and any other opinion you might have about Zend Studio or Zend Technologies products in general.

Thanks in advance.

I have been using it for 2 years now.

Its a pretty good IDE considering its java.

The plus points to it is code completion (also a pain in the *** as its automatic and not implemented via crtl + space as other IDE's do, or maybee i just never found its option to change its behaviour). But the major plus is its built in ftp ability so you can quite easily have your files at your ISP available.

This is a dream for me as you can edit them without having to ftp get them and save them just as easy. (of course all major changes are done locally then uploaded).

It also error checks your documents on the fly and its project functionality will trace through your classes and make all your methods available via code completion (did I just say all, i was lying but it does come close)

Then you have its debugger which I very rarely use (but would use more if the current project required it).

Down sides to it include been unable to install it with SELinux enabled (but that only took a day or so to resolve).

Was it worth the money?

Well my boss paid for my license so it was easy come easy go for me.

I recently upgraded to Fedora 4 and installed the java eclipse enviroment, I then installed php eclipse which is by far a better IDE than Zends but alas its ftp functionality will not work which (while not rendering it useless) makes it that bit more of a mess around when sorting stuff out.

So untill eclipse sorts its like out I am Zend to the core.

And lets not forget VI either.

But when you can create projects with your IDE and the IDE can trace through your project and provide all methods/ defines etc on the fly with a few keywords to kick it off then I am sold.

ZEND 7/10 - 2 for having to pay for it.
Eclipse 7/10 -2 for its messed up ftp ability + 2 because its free.

I am using Zend 3.5 never bothered to pay the upgrade fee as I am waiting on eclipse to get with it, eclipse looks promising and its free, cannot get better than that mate.

Zend 4 has CVS built into it and I am sure its going down well with the developers who use it.

Ibbo

Eclipse also has CVS builtin, although it can be a pain to get it to talk to a repository on your local machine.

I know you want people who use Zend for dev, which I don't, but I have For large projects I think it's probably one of the better IDE's out there. Features like code completion and the file inspector will make any dev's life easier. And the debugger is a godsend.

But with that said, I don't like it I don't like the feel of it, a hundred small things bundle up into a roll and make it a bad experience. For me, at least. I don't like it, but I know a PHP developer who would die if he had to live without it

I wouldn't exactly recommend Eclipse for PHP programming, as I haven't tried that yet, but I'm using it for Java projects right now and I'm more than happy with it. I'm sure PHP Eclipse is just as good.

I'd guess you've tried the demo already -- do you like it so far? You might want to look at phpEd, too.

I have had some ftp issues with phpEclipse which is why I am still using Zend.

I like the feel of Eclipse more than Zend though.

Thanks for the link Chroder, following it now.

Ibbo

Thanks for the great feedback, everyone. No, I have not used the evaulation copies yet, but wanted to see the general feeling about Zend before I even go that far. Thanks for your input.....