Over the last seven years I’ve tried out almost every single tool available for my code editing work. I’ve tried open source tools, free tools, commercial applications, and they none of them meet my expectations.

I wanted to quickly mention the top three I’ve been able to use the longest and still document why they’re not what I want them to be.

Coda

I’ve tried out the excellent editor from Panic – it has two killer features: ftp upload buttons next to filenames that are stored locally and sharing via bonjour over the network. Coda is pretty basic and lightweight, but for hardcore php developer it lacks tools I find helpful.

I’ve heard that Coda is working on subversion integration which will be nice, but what I really need is improved php support. If they wanted to give me better code analysis, php variable/function exploring functions, syntax error highlighting, etc, I would enjoy it much more.

Coda is unlikely to every meet all of those expectations because it’s more of an everything editor and will probably never have specific language features like that.

Zend Studio 5

I’ve used this tool the most but there are a few items it lacks that I really would like to have. First off, while it can edit files over ftp directly, I would like it to have an ftp upload like Coda does. Zend 5 has no subversion support. I’m really driven crazy by some basic file quirks on Mac that I’ve been unable to resolve.

Zend 6 has a lot more features that would be very useful but unfortunately, it’s a worse program for me than Zend 5.

Zend 6

Immediately I’m shown how awful and clunky the new project/file management system is. There are too many ways to create and store projects. Many of the default ways now store my code somewhere I don’t want it, and confused the heck out of me when trying to edit files.

It also decided to keep all of these hidden files in my folders which had I left them would have been checked into my subversion repo. I immediately dismisses Komodo from Aptana because of this same issue – my project files were being stored in with my code.

I’m having similar problems with zend 6 on mac – files will not open properly when I just double click on them or right click and select “open with”.

Also, the preferences are a thousand times more confusing – I can change syntax colors in two or three different places for the same code type.

Why can’t anyone fix these issues? Who would release a tool that can’t properly open files? Why does Zend have to make a product that’s actually worse than it’s predecessor? I’ve tried a thousand others but I’ll keep looking. Any suggestions?