Zend Studio Decline?
I’m starting to wonder what the future of Zend Studio is due to disappointing updates and the new PHP IDE Project backed by Zend. I’m quite disappointed that the java based cross-platform application that is Zend Studio isn’t a native application to OS X Intel. Supposedly this should work through rosetta, but come on, it’s java, it shouldn’t have to be specific to PowerPC, and shouldn’t be hard to fix this at least for the primary program. I believe my first attempt to actually install Zend Studio on my MacBook Pro was met in similar failure to the friend that warned me that it has issues on OS X intel. I seemed to have installed 5.5 beta just fine and it so far seems fine. But it’s still severly limited since you can’t use the Zend Debugger, Profiler, or Platform features since that requires the Zend extensions which are PowerPC and you can run PowerPC applications but not load shared libraries like those into intel applications. So basically it’s not a 100% package on OS X intel.
The other issue is that I have an expired Zend Studio 5.1, meaning it’s still valid to use but no free updates, so $200 to get 5.2 or 5.5 when it’s out. And for what? Nothing special at all, there’s some cool stuff, like Zend Platform integration is actually something nicer in 5.5 compared to the initial stuff in 5.2. I’m not sure I like the subscription style upgrade program, it benefits you at times like when a huge release comes out like say if 6.0 was coming out when you still had the support/updates. Mine happened to expire before 5.2 or 5.5 so neither are free, I definitely said no to paying to renew and get 5.2 since there was barely anything at all new, and 5.5 isn’t much better either. Not worth it until maybe 6.0.
Also, is Zend Studio going to be continued or is the PHP IDE Project slated to eventually be Zend/PHP’s preferred IDE of choice. Doesn’t seem like it, but the fact that Zend is helping with what would be competition for Zend Studio seems kinda odd. That and the lack of intel support for Zend Studio and Zend Platform makes it kinda uncertain if it’s worth spending money for an upgrade, at least not until there’s a better looking update that provides something more worthwhile. In the meantime I’m seriously looking at Komodo Professional to see if it’s at all a better deal, specially with all the languages it’s capable of handling, including code suggestion for more than just PHP, but for other languages and also CSS and XSL too. The biggest concerns for that IDE so far are performance/snapiness and limited PHP code suggestion. I don’t know if PHP IDE Eclipse project will be good, at least not yet, but Eclipse has been incredibly slow on linux and OS X. We’ll see how things progress with it.
Technorati Tags: php, programming, development, software, tools, zend
Tags: development, ide, PHP, programming, Software, tools, zend