When comparing Zend Studio vs CodeLite IDE, the Slant community recommends Zend Studio for most people. In the question“What are the best IDEs or editors for PHP?” Zend Studio is ranked 15th while CodeLite IDE is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Zend Studio is:
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.
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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 Advanced support for all popular framework
Including Laravel, WordPress, Drupal, jQuery, Bootstrap and so on
Pro Modest memory footprint
CodeLite takes up about 50 MB when loaded into memory with a workspace opened.
Pro Open source and free
CodeLite is licensed under GPL with source code available on GitHub.
Pro Extensive plugin support
Git, SFTP, Subversion, and many more plugins are fully supported in CodeLite IDE.
Pro Rapid development cycle
CodeLite is actively developed with activity almost daily on Github.
Pro Workspace view reminiscent of File Explorer
The workspace view, unlike other IDEs, is a reflection of the actual directory structure on the file system (with user filters applied).
Pro Excellent Node.js debugger
This makes fixing issues more efficiently and debugging code less painful.
Pro Intelligent code completion
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 Bland UI
The UI is fairly boring and has limited customization options. There is a dark theme available; however it only applies to the editor. The surrounding windows and borders remain light. You can see a collection of screenshots here.