Zend, why would you?

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robster
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Zend, why would you?

Post by robster »

I'm a home/hobby developer and starting to get freelance gigs. I'm also working on my big killer app, which is a large 6 month - 12 month project.

I run windows xp(i know i know, usually a mac, but here I am).

The thing is, why Zend? Is it worth it? What version should I be looking at? Should I just stick with Dreamweaver and be done with it?

I'd really appreciate thoughts on this, as I do like the idea of being able to watch variables and step through code (watching said variables) etc.

Soooo.... :)

What do YOU think?
malcolmboston
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Post by malcolmboston »

if your serious about programming, its worth every penny, however you can get fre alternatives that do most of what zend can do, however, zend has the advantage of being built by zend, and therefore unrivalled features such as code profiler, breakpoints etc

its awesome and worth every penny, i wouldnt code without it
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phpScott
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Post by phpScott »

I have only been coding with Zend for a couple of months and am finding worth the investment. Yes, the company I work for paid for it but if I was to do freelancing work from home I would make the investment, heck I might anyway just to have a copy at home when I doing my personal stuff.

There are good free alternatives just search this board for editors and there is a big post on them.

Worth it, i think so.
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robster
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Post by robster »

I just looked at the flash movie for the pro version... I'm drooling.
If they accept paypal I think they'll have a customer ;)

I'll just dload the demo first, just to be sure I can get used to it.

Any reasons AGAINST it (Seeing as I feel like I'm sold already)?
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Post by Syranide »

Btw, just for the fact, know that Client and Server is separate, and profiling, debugging etc doesn't work without the server. (Not sure if they are sold seperately either)

But to the point, if you don't intend to buy the server, and has the php-manual buy your side, you can just as well run it as a free version, no trial but some things such as the manual is gone, no profiling etc of coarse.
malcolmboston
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Post by malcolmboston »

robster wrote: Any reasons AGAINST it (Seeing as I feel like I'm sold already)?
its a resource hogging, java-based application, but the benefits outway the cons imo.

if you have higher than 1.5ghz / 256 DDR you should be OK, it doesnt need anything like that spec, but experience has shown computers grind to a halt when working on large projects with multiple files open
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robster
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Post by robster »

2.2Ghz, 1Gig RAM (DDR) should be ok though, but I hear you on the JAVA thing, I didn't realise... mmmm, we'll see how the demo goes.
EViL3
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Post by EViL3 »

On the cover, Zend looks pretty good and UI is neatly laid out - The real issues begins with the debugger as its difficult to integrate with existing setups, but the biggest issue for me is output is shown as raw HTML with out any option to show it properly rendered.

Personally I recommend Nusphere, its native, has a full advanced debugger/profiler and most important gives me the output I want to see.
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Post by Syranide »

If you want it rendered you have the webbrowser for that... which is where you debug etc too, the internal is just for being able to test solutions locally, which is quite good when you are not connected or at home.
EViL3
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Post by EViL3 »

:roll: Yes and I could also write code in Notepad :arrow: but since IDE is an abbreviation for Integrated Development Enviroment, I shouldn't need to leave it to see the rendered results, I've worked with many IDE's and none of them suffer from this "oversight" -

Before anybody suggests its a Java limitation, no its not :)

Sorry to annoy any Zend fans out there, this is just my pet peeve with Zend Studio - while its a simple feature, its also very important and it bugs me that they've overlooked it for so long.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

I wouldn't want to spend time viewing my rendered version in Zend when I'm only going to then go away and view it in FF, IE and Konqueror. But it's a matter of opionion I guess :)
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robster
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Post by robster »

It seems I had to use IE to make use of the debugger (and I'm not a fan of the monster). Is that true or is it just me being a neub?
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phpScott
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Post by phpScott »

no should be able to debug within the zend enviroment and not worry about a browser.

otherwise just point your browser to the script and presto out the page appears.

otherwise here is the link for the ff browser debugger
http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend ... ug-ins.php
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