Development Tools: What Do You Use?
Development tools come in all shapes and sizes, free and commercial. While some might call them cheating, I say if it makes you more productive, it’s fair game. I have tried a ton of tools, and have my favorites (or ones I am forced to use) which are listed below with my comments. I am really interested to hear what others are using, as I am always in the mood to try something new.
NetBeans
NetBeans is arguable the best open source IDE out there. It comes packed with all the needed features right out of the box. NetBeans also has a very small learning curve, so if you have used any IDE you will have no problem learning NetBeans. An excellent Java IDE!
UltraEdit
An old school favorite of mine, which I have used for many many years. In fact I have replaced Windows Notepad with UltraEdit, because it does a much better job as a text editor. Over the years I have seen UltraEdit grow and it has gotten a little fat, but they have done a good job of adding the features and keeping the program easy to use.
Zend Studio
I use Zend Studio for PHP projects. I have tried many PHP IDE’s, and found Zend Studio to be the best. It has a great auto complete feature, which other PHP IDE’s lacked. In addition, it does a really good job of controlling the environment and allow you to just code while it takes care of the rest.
Visual Studio
I use Visual Studio 2003 for work, and it is certainly not my favorite C++ IDE. It lacks a lot of features that are very common with IDE’s these days; like god syntax highlighting, or Ctrl+clicking on a key function call to go to that function declaration. A lot of these necessary feature can be added by using a third party plug in called Visual Assist X. I have no clue why Microsoft does not just purchase the company, and implement these features into Visual Studio.
WAMP Server
Yes I develop on a Windows, but host on Linux with Apache. So when developing web applications, WAMP Server does a very good job of setting up a local web server on your machine with all of the necessities like PHP, Apache, MySQL, etc. It even has plug ins that allow you to switch between PHP 4 and 5.
phpMyAdmin
A classic, not much to say about this one other than it;s great and you need it.
This list goes on for me, but these are the first that came to mind. Send m your list, and what you think about the tools. I am really interested in seeing what the majority of you out there use.
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Comments
Java, jsf/jsp => Eclipse
html, css, PHP => Eclipse
Python => Eclipse
Shell => vi
One for all is very nice =)
Almost everything => Eclipse.
EditPlus2 instead of notepad (it’s regexp search and replace is awesome).
Has anyone used both Eclipse and Netbeans? It seems most people I talk to that develop in either one or the other haven’t tried both and don’t seem inclined to.
Personally, for java I use Eclipse and haven’t tried NetBeans.
Ruby => SciTE
Scheme => DrProject
Other => Notepad++ (Which I like better than UltraEdit)
i use NetBeans for java. Easy to develop quick GUI designs. It even provides a Mobility Pack for developing mobile device apps a.k.a midlets 
I have started using netbeans for ruby - it rocks.
I use VS2005 for work on C#
vi for dbl and bash scripting.
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Favorit:
Java -> NetBeans
C# -> MS Visual Studio
C/C++ -> Code Blocks
HTML/PHP -> Homesite
and Textpad as replacement for MS Notepad