When comparing Aptana Studio vs Coda 2, the Slant community recommends Coda 2 for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript IDEs or editors?” Coda 2 is ranked 30th while Aptana Studio is ranked 40th. The most important reason people chose Coda 2 is:
Coda 2 comprises all you would expect from an IDE: it supports multiple languages (including all the standards); it performs autocomplete of project names, as well as language functions; it supports SVN and GIT; it has good support for plugins (or you can write your own); it has a configurable editor; and it has a built-in preview.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Available in standalone and Eclipse plugin versions
Aptana Studio has standalone (130.7 MB for Windows) and Eclipse-plugin versions.
Pro HTML5-aware code assist
Aptana's code assist displays which tags are supported by which browsers.
Pro Support for web projects
Aptana was specifically created for web application development. It supports a variety of languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby.
Pro Built-in terminal
Has a built-in terminal emulator from which you can run commands.
Pro Free and open source
Aptana is available for free under the GPL license with source code available on GitHub.
Pro Git integration
Aptana provides integrated support for Git to make collaboration and version control easier.
Pro Real IDE with all the benefits
Coda 2 comprises all you would expect from an IDE: it supports multiple languages (including all the standards); it performs autocomplete of project names, as well as language functions; it supports SVN and GIT; it has good support for plugins (or you can write your own); it has a configurable editor; and it has a built-in preview.
Cons
Con Many dependencies
Aptana has a couple of dependencies to keep in mind.
It is built with Java and and has some requirements for the JDK version.
Aptana requires Git, and Eclipse 3.5+ if you are installing it as an Eclipse plugin.
Con No longer updated
Language support is increasingly dated.
Con Defective UI
There are several things in Coda that simply don't work, and never have. For instance, the root directory for your local and remote files is simply not honored. For every project, you can specify the root directory for its files. But when you open the project in Coda, it doesn't go there. The file browser just shows whatever the last directory was that you were using, and will write files to the wrong place. Thus, it defeats the purpose of setting the home directory in the first place.
Also, splitting the editor doesn't work. If you've done any programming, you know how important it is to be able to view two files simultaneously. Coda fails to do this, with a bizarre insistence on making the two panes dependent on each other.
Con Support for Mac and commercial use only
Coda 2 is only available on Mac (even though that does make it a native app, meaning its much faster). Coda 2 costs $99 after the 30 day free trial is up.
Con No XDebug
If you also write PHP, there's no XDebug support available.