Item: PhpStorm
Rating: 10
Author: Ray Flores

Overall Satisfaction with PhpStorm

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PhpStorm is being used by the technical department. Having hundreds of files per project, PhpStorm makes it easy to find such files as it scans each project folder and indexes it accordingly. This helps also with keeping to one type of coding structure. We utilize PHP language, and by name, PhpStorm was built to handle just about anything PHP.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Code completion
UI Theming
Indexing of existing repositories
Git, Terminal, SSH connections are easy to manage
Deployment by Remote Host

Cons

Memory hogging
Project structure when attaching to another opened project is not intuitive to find resolution
Markdown setup

Return on Investment

The license fee of PhpStorm, for our business, is outweighed by time saved ( payroll costs ) as it makes coding that much easier to accomplish
Not having to worry about the 'givens' in the code, is such a time saver, that I am not sure your could put a savings number against that... but, if I had to guess, I would think you could save an hour or two each day, just by the default settings within PHPStorm, no matter what language you are coding.

Usability

The UI is very easy to understand. From common to less common, with the search feature, you can find anything you are looking for within the software. For me, that makes it tremendously easy to use.

Support Rating

The JetBrains community is all about helping others succeed, even in the most obscure setups. I have never had a question go unanswered, or I have never been able to come up with empty results in searching for the answer. My questions or concerns are typically address from other users in the community, so timing is pretty quick for a response.

Alternatives Considered

Notepad++

Notepad++ is exactly that, notepad on steriods. However, PHPStorm was designed specifically for PHP ( my language of choice ) and thus, common settings that I would have to tailor within Notepad++ ( ever time an update comes out, which is very often ), do not have to get reset often at all.

Other Software Used

RapidDeploy, Zoom, Trello

Likelihood to Recommend

PhpStorm is well suited for my purposes when I need to compile SCSS/JS files in a project as soon as I hit CTRL + S ( win ), save my work, it's quick and seamless to then deploy my project on a live ( staging of course ) site on the internet for others to review. It is also great for GIT ( version control ) with files colored to let me know what has been added, committed or what is in that particular branch or stash.

Comments

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The storm has come with PHPStorm!