I'm trying to determine how likely it is that my next job will involve the use of a Mac/PC if I am hired as a PHP programmer. With Rails, most shops seem to develop on the Mac. I'm wondering whether the same is true of PHP.
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A:
The simple answer would be more people use PC's so more developers develop PHP on a PC. I use Linux.
Chris Kloberdanz
2009-01-30 05:25:31
that's only true if the trend for people using PC vs Other is consistent among people who developing using PCs vs Other
SnOrfus
2009-01-30 20:05:15
A:
I would say PHP is more on windows as it has been around much longer and likely spread to more development environments.
Jas Panesar
2009-01-30 05:29:01
The world does not consist entirely of "Windows" and "Mac". Both combined are a tiny minority among PHP developers I know.
Ant P.
2009-01-30 22:27:44
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A:
I have seen a few companies say in their job advertisement that they use Macs to develop on. In reality though I think that was just put there for the "cool" factor.I am willing to bet that they would allow you to use whatever you wanted to develop PHP on as long as your PHP + Apahce/IIS/whatever configuration is not a million miles away from what is used on the production servers.
Tim
2009-01-30 05:30:30
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A:
They all can do it very well, I would just make sure you are comfortable with all 3 operating systems. My office does almost ASP.net development exclusively, and the guy next to me develops on a Mac! Basically, as a professional, you need to be able to hop on anything and be able to develop on it.
When I did PHP, I developed on XP, deployed on Linux, FWIW.
patricksweeney
2009-01-30 05:33:11
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A:
I don't think it should matter all that much when it comes to web script programming like PHP or JavaScript, unless you are partial to a specific IDE or something. I do all of my web programming code in a notepad editor, but it does not seem like it would be all that hard to code just as well on a Mac or a Linux box or even a Blackberry.
Shane Larson
2009-01-30 06:13:00
+1
A:
I do all my development at work on Windows XP.
For PHP development at work I use Nusphere PHP Ed on Windows. It has a lot of useful features like debugging and code intelligence, but I've found it to be a little unstable for software that costs money. Still, if you don't mind it freezing up every so often and want to pay for it, it's a great PHP IDE for Windows.
My personal favourite is Eclipse with the PHP IDE Project plug-in (there's a few options), if you use that it doesn't matter which OS you use (it works on PC, Mac and Linux).
Sophia
2009-01-30 06:33:25
A:
I do most of my heavy development on Linux. If you are running Linux servers, like we do, and your site uses specific services, it's best to keep your development platform as close to your target production server.
I use a Mac to do personal development, but I'm not as comfortable with that as I am on Linux.
I bet quite a few people use Windows for web development as most people use windows full stop, and I see no reason why not, if that's what they prefer. I don't.
Hans
2009-01-30 16:50:10
+7
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Most PHP development houses will have you debug and run your code in a testing environment that mimics the production environment. This way you are able to use the OS/editor/IDE of your choice and it should all come out okay. One of the advantages of PHP over other web service languages (ASP.net, et al.) is that it is multi-platform at its heart. I would be more worried about things like what version control system are they using and what is their production environment like than what desktop OS you will have to use, as these are the variables that get locked in stone while your desktop machine isn't.
Nolte Burke
2009-01-30 20:00:47
Well said. From what I have seen, this is also the case. I developed PHP mostly on Windows, but a good chunk of the team didn't. One was on a Mac, and about half we're on Windows, but the test server was Linux.
patricksweeney
2009-01-31 04:21:39
+1
A:
There is no limiting factor in regards to the language itself. We're a pure PHP development environment and all of our developers use Macs. But it wouldn't be a problem if any of them used Windows boxes or Linux boxes to develop on. The only problem would be if the company had development tools that had to be run on a specific platform. The short answer is: it depends on where you get a job.
conceptDawg
2009-01-30 22:24:28
I know it has been a while since you answered, but can you say which IDE and Debugger you guys use on the Mac?
rikh
2010-10-06 22:17:47
That's a hard one because we all use IDEs that each of us is most most familiar with. Some of us don't even use true IDEs, instead using a feature-rich text editor like BBEdit or the like. A couple of us are using Eclipse and we have at least one person using TextMate, I think. As for debugging, we have our own in-house system for PHP debugging and logging. We use Firebug on the down-stream side of things.
conceptDawg
2010-10-15 02:25:27
A:
At the moment i am doing all my PHP development on a macbook using a Centos Virtual box. Its great as you do not have to install anything on your actual mac apart from Virtual box as its Free. It takes around a 1 or 2 hours to set up the guest correctly and you can be on your way. From there i am using Eclipse PHP for the actual code development.
Neale
2010-02-22 12:44:46