Eclipse users: Do you use Aptana too?

Question

This San Mateo development company makes a freely downloadable convenient packaging of many plugins for Eclipse called Aptana. I was recently in an environment where Aptana came pre-installed. Not only is it a good IDE for RoR, it also does a somewhat decent job (sans debugging) for PHP, Python, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. According to their own web site, their IDE also supports Adobe Air and the iPhone.

If you are currently using Eclipse, then do you also use Aptana too? What, if any, are the drawbacks to using Aptana?

Answer 1

I use Eclipse with PyDev for Python programming, but I don't use Aptana.

Aptana just uses PyDev for its Python support, so really there is no incentive for me to add extra baggage I wouldn't use like Javascript support. If you actually needed all these things it seems nice, but I would prefer to just get each plugin separately as I need it.

Answer 2

I have used it frequently when doing rails development on windows. While on OS X I still prefer good ol' TextMate. Aptana has good support and integration for a variety of web languages. It was also convenient having built-in tools for the rails console, rails server management, rake tasks, ruby gems and rails plugins. I started off using the standalone version, but have since switched to using it as an Eclipse plugin. The standalone version uses an older Eclipse base. For me, one of the benefits of using an updated version of Eclipse was that I could use the eclipse Git SCM plugin.

Answer 3

I use Zend Studio for Eclipse for php, Eclipse for Flex Builder and Aptana for javascript and Air Apps.
I have also used the Aptana Eclipse plugin which works well but requires Eclipse Ganymead whereas Flex Builder requires Europa.

My situation might be a bit different because I use a Linux desktop, but I wish I could have just the one Eclipse for all my work. ho hum...

I have to say Aptana is fantasic - although Zend is better for PHP. I haven't tried the Jaxter stuff yet but I love the way it handles javascript libraries - much better than JSEclipse.

Answer 4

I use Eclipse PDT for PHP

Answer 5

I have Aptana and Eclipse, but keep them separate since I do a lot of Java programming too. If you have one Eclipse with everything combined, then it turns into a bit of a memory hog (More so than usual) and takes too long to start up. Also, Aptana seems to thrust newsletters at you on startup, so if you use Eclipse for things other than Aptana-stuff, then this is another reason to keep it separate coz it gets a bit annoying after a while.

Answer 6

I used to use Aptana for Rails development (and Eclipse for my Java development), but I've found it caused 10 second pauses now and again on my development PC and it was getting too annoying. I gave Netbeans a try (I used to use it for my Java development before Eclipse), preferred the Rails tools and haven't switched back to track down the cause of the pauses.

Aptana (RadRails) was definitely the best Windows Rails IDE a couple of years ago, but has fallen behind the times in my opinion.

Answer 7

I mainly do web development, therefore I choose to use Aptana. Aptana is a great Eclipse based web development platform. It comes with some crap (like Jaxer and all that stuff you don't need) but that's easy enough to ignore. I use Aptana on both Windows and Linux (Ubuntu).

If I was to do C/C++, Eclipse Plugin or Java development I would probably just use vanilla Eclipse (with JEE extensions when necessary). but for web development is quite good.

Answer 8

i'm trying...can't seem to make javascript dojo library support work ... argh

Answer 9

No, I don't use Aptana. I just grab the Eclipse plugins that I need for whatever I'm working on.

Answer 10

I use Aptana only since I don't need the Java perspectives. There is also a Eclipse Helios project for Java Script development but it is still not as good as Aptana.