hmm, tough question for me. i have (had actually) so many favorites depending on context. but definitely it’s interesting to write here about them
1. notepad – i am a notepad fan, for a very long time since 98 to 2006 and still i like it very much. but well, after that i’d found notepad++ and i liked it for it’s outstanding syntax highlighting features. if by any chance, i have to use windows these days, i work in notepad++
2. visual studio 6: yup, i must agree it is one of the best ide i’ve ever came in touch with. i have worked on visual basic for a long time (99 to 2006) and i was simply in love with visual studio ide. and it’s awesome intellisense + gui designer was the center of the attraction.
3. zend studio: i still use it. its one of my most favorite ide because of it’s os independent distribution. i like most of the features in it (SQL editor, subversion support, FTP etc) and ofcourse the feature to check the output of yourcode inside it. the object inspector is really a very cool feature. and i also use “find in files” feature very often to find the file i am particularly looking to edit. oh by the way – i use the old version (the non-eclipse version) and still use the 5.5.1 version for my everyday development.
4. phped: its a good editor for windows (never tried it’s linux version) but for some unknown reason i’ve failed to get used to with it.
5. netbeans: its superb 🙂 i like it very much. but as i am used to with zend studio i dont use it much. but i always suggest netbeans to someone who is looking for a decent and powerful ide for php (well, yeah also for java specially for the outstanding GUI designer for swing based apps)
6. aptana studio and spket ide : both of them are very very good for editing javascript. i use spket in linux for it’s small footprint. and aptana studio in my regular home and office machines.
6. nano – yeah it is the latest editor that i use almost everyday. you know it is available in both linux and mac. so i use it frequently in my local dev platform (mac osx based) and remote machines (linux based). and it is much more easier than vi – i know vi(m) is a very good editor and there are millions of user of vi(m), so what? if i can’t find it useful then i wont use it 🙂 – i find nano is very handy and easy to use. i have enabled php syntax highlighting in nano (via nanoarc) and it works really cool in shell 🙂
i dont like eclipse. there is no particular reason but for some unknown reason (i remember one, extremely resource hungriness and large footprint) i never feel comfortable with it. i use only one eclipse based ide (aptana) becoz there is no other good alternative to it. and only for this reason i also don’t use the new zend studio.
so hey, what is your favorite ide?