James Fuller has posted some of his thoughts about the state of IDEs for PHP (text editors too!) and some of his recent experiences trying to find one that fits his needs.

I think the first "IDE" I ever used for web development would have to be Adobe Dreamweaver (nee Macromedia). Ok, so maybe it was Microsoft FrontPage, but that shouldn’t really count. [...] This post is about my experience moving away from the oft-maligned program and some lessons learned in my quest for the perfect IDE.

He tried out several options including Netbeans, Eclipse (PDT), Sublime Text 2 and one he found the most appealing, PHPStorm.

Looking back I realize that IDE’s have been a constant annoyance and yet have prompted so much growth and development in my skill level. [...] I also think that the problems I have ran into with IDE’s are true about software in general. We search for better solutions and always fall short.