CodeLobster PHP Edition Review

In this review you will learn about:

1. Introduction to PHP IDE Tools

2. Factors to Consider for Choosing an IDE

   • Speed

   • Extensibility

   • Debugger

   • Integrations

3. Conclusion

Introduction to PHP IDE Tools

It is true that everyone wants to be more productive, make fewer mistakes and write good code, especially with the myriad of ways that development is changing with every new tool and processes.

I like to also think that every programmer knows the importance of streamlining and simplifying their application development process to handle the rapid dynamism of the industry.

Of course, this all depends on the tools that we use to achieve our individual goals such as our preferred coding convention and more importantly, our choice of IDE.

An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) allows you to run programming code written in different programming languages, and a PHP IDE is effectively an IDE that specifically allows you to test, run, and edit code written in the PHP Programming language while being an handy sidekick for all the things that come up during software development like deployment, code review, secrets management, collaboration, version control, and so on. 

There are numerous Integrated Development Environments software at our grasp today, but I have taken a deep dive into the ones that come up on the first page of Google search and I would like to introduce you to one of my favorites, the CodeLobster IDE.

Not just for its simplicity to use, how well tailor-made it is for PHP development but also for the flexibility it provides - it comes with plugins and support for the major frameworks and content management systems in the ecosystem today.

Read along, let me introduce you to the CodeLobster IDE and tell you why I migrated my development workflow to this tool.

The CodeLobster User Interface

Factors to Consider for Choosing an IDE

Not all Integrated Development Environments are created equal. Picking the right one can be a daunting activity. You need to carefully consider the features your preferred IDE needs to have; speed, debugger, extensibility, cost and ease of use come up top of the list virtually all the time.

Speed

Personally, speed is a major yardstick for deciding a choice of IDE and CodeLobster is a perfect candidate for the fast IDE award. Not only does it’s syntax highlighting, code validation features run in almost real-time, I was able to save and load projects, write code and use its debugger without having to wait or experience any performance issue as I did when performing the same operations on another IDE for comparison.

CodeLobster installs fewer features by default and provides an extensibility mechanism via plug-ins which makes it as feature-complete and robust as possible. It does not install what you do not need, therefore you get maximum performance gains.

Extensibility via Plugins

Due to the provision to extend it via plugins, the CodeLobster IDE is able to provide support for CMSes such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and frameworks such as Laravel, CakePHP, etc while providing integration for other language frameworks like Angular and twig.

Not only does it make development in PHP much easier with capabilities such as code highlighting, intelligent code auto-completion, smart navigation across project code, tooltips, contextual and dynamic help, it makes it encompassing by bringing together things like version control and other DevOps tools that makes building full-fledged applications possible - all of this through its robust extensibility mechanism via plug-ins which results in very minimal compute resource footprint.

Debugger

CodeLobster comes with an interactive PHP debugger similar to what you get from debuggers for compiled languages.

It provides a code tracing functionality that allows you to rapidly find the root cause of those nifty errors and bugs.

The debugger allows you to execute php scripts step by step, sequentially moving through the lines of code and assigning checkpoints, breakpoints and monitoring/watching variables during script execution.

This makes not just debugging PHP code hassle-free and more interesting, it also provides an easier way to carry out code review.

Integrations

CodeLobster integrates seamlessly with Git for version control and also provides an SQL Manager tool for integrating smoothly with most database systems during development.

With the SQL Manager tool, you can work with MySQL and edit database schema directly from the IDE with such features as SQL auto-complete, schema editing, CRUD operations, and data export wizard.

Conclusion

I have used and explored ZendStudio, PHPEd and Komodo IDE amongst others, I can categorically tell you that one of the major things that CodeLobster has going for it is how lightweight and robust it is.

There is no major source of frustration during development other than when your development tool hangs, freezes or does not respond due to high compute resource consumption, I did not experience any of these issues with the CodeLobster IDE.

CodeLobster IDE has two license variations: a free portable and multi-platform version that comes with the essential features that have already been discussed above and a professional version with more features. 

The CodeLobster IDE supports Windows, Mac Os and Linux and can be downloaded for free. You can visit the official Web page of the CodeLobster IDE to learn more about the features described and about the professional license. 

You may be wasting time if you are not using an IDE. I believe that every IDE provides a lot of features.

Some of those features are very useful while some are not. This is why it is important to go with the option that allows you to control and customize what you get. CodeLobster gives you this choice.