Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Development Tools

Best IDE for Mac

I realize there is going to be a lot of opinion here, which is fine so long as its constructive.Give reasoning for your opinions.

I primarily work on windows machines however I have a "standalone" system that I can use off network at work which is a MacBook Pro. I'm starting to like the Mac, and was considering building a 'hackintosh' for home use. I was curious as to what IDE for web development people felt were the best.

Prior to TreeHouse I used to lurk the video tutorials over at nettuts+ and most of those guys used Coda. At work on Windows I am stuck with Visual Studios and I have Dreamweaver for Windows at home.

Patrick Cooney
Patrick Cooney
12,216 Points

It would help to know whether you plan to develop for the front or back end (if back, which language?) as there are some IDEs that only support a few languages.

pretty much all encompassing. the more I can do in one software the less I have to bounce around. I'm talking HTML CSS JavaScript (with Sass,LESS, Coffee). I should also be able to do PHP, if it can do anything for SQL/MySQL, even better. Work is alright but I am a contractor which means at the end of the fiscal year I go up on the chopping block unless I can show that I am worth keeping around. In the event that I don't I plan on doing a fair bit of work on the side to pad my portfolio.

4 Answers

Stone Preston
Stone Preston
42,016 Points

most people around here use Sublime Text 2, since it is the text editor used in the videos. Its not an IDE, just a text editor.

I'm not a huge fan of IDE's but you have:

I prefer just using TextMate 2, the only plugin I've needed was Emmet (awesome shorthand plugin). I then use git to push all my work to Beanstalk, and deploy from there.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Except for Zend Studio those are all text editors. That being said, most web development is done in text editors, there are a few IDEs designed for PHP.

Not clear on why Komodo and Coda are not considered IDE's?

Yeah, I am a little confused as to the difference. I am looking for code/syntax highlighting, auto-completion, good directory/file management, the ability to run/debug in development.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

For coda their homepage uses the word editor to describe their product. For Komodo I didn't notice you linked to their IDE product, they also have Komodo Edit, which as you would imagine is a text editor.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

The line between text editor that ships with plugins and IDE is mostly semantic if you are talking about web development.

Coda mentions it has an editor amongst other things. If it's not an IDE, I'm not sure what is.

Patrick Cooney
Patrick Cooney
12,216 Points

I don't know anything that inclusive off the top of my head. Dreamweaver may actually be your best option. It'll help you with HTML, CSS, Javascript (I believe) and PHP. Just don't get in the habit of using design mode and letting it write your code for you.

That said, I, like many others here, use Sublime. The IDEs I've tried didn't really speed up my workflow at all so I decided to stick with a text editor. However, you asked about IDEs for which Dreamweaver is my suggestion (CS5+ for php hinting).

I can't stand design mode lol.

thomas howard
thomas howard
17,572 Points

Good talk guys. Had the exact same question.

To move it a little down the line it seems to be going. Would you subscribe to Adobe for $20.00 a month for dreamweaver, or get the stand alone product?

Thanks.