When comparing Zend Studio vs Eclipse PHP Development Tools, the Slant community recommends Eclipse PHP Development Tools for most people. In the question“What are the best IDEs or editors for PHP?” Eclipse PHP Development Tools is ranked 3rd while Zend Studio is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Eclipse PHP Development Tools is:
Eclipse has a huge community developing plugins that can then be found on the [marketplace](http://marketplace.eclipse.org/).
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Pros
Pro Notices about unused code
Unused variables or namespace uses. Variables only defined orasigned but never used. A lot of warning and notices that allow you to have clean code.
Pro Tightly integrated with Zend Server
Pro Zend Framework integration
Pro Access to a wide variety of Eclipse plugins
Eclipse has a huge community developing plugins that can then be found on the marketplace.
Pro Free, cross-platform
PDT is available for free on Windows, OSX and Linux.
Pro Modular architecture offers flexibility in setup
Since Eclipse is highly modular by design, relying heavily on plugins for functionality it can be set up so that it includes only the necessary functionality and nothing else.
Pro A plethora of configuration options
Each component of Eclipse can be configured separately offering fine grained control.
Pro Syntax highlighting
Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT) has such good syntax highlighting for PHP, CSS, HTML.
Pro Syntax validation
You would not be regret for having PDT as you IDE choices for PHP Development. It will help you validate your PHP code without you worry it will be wrong.
Pro Remote Xdebug possible
If you are running your PHP in an Docker-Container you can easily connect Xdebug remotly with Eclipse.
Cons
Con Expensive
Con Used to be quite good, but left behind by PhpStorm in terms of functionality.
Used Zend Studio for many years, forking out lots of money to do so. Since Zend stopped offering Zend Server as a free edition, I switched to PhpStorm. The difference is amazing - PhpStorm is so much nicer to use, and has many more time-saving and code-improving features. For a start, PhpStorm knows all about Drupal coding standards, and Drupal as a content management framework. It even spots when you create a project that uses Drupal: two clicks later you are configured for Drupal coding style and you have automatic code completion for Drupal hook functions!
Con Javascript is broken in version 13.6
Con Doesn't support blade files
Con You need big memory of RAM
You need at least 4GB Ram for get the fastest PDT if you plan to use it as your PHP tools.
Con Configuring Eclipse is time-consuming
Setting up Eclipse can be difficult. Each section and each plugin of Eclipse has its own preferences that together add up to lots of tweaking.