Is there a majority of professional PHP development on computers or on Mac computers?

Question

I am trying to determine how likely it is that my next job will be to use a Mac / PC if I am hired as a PHP programmer. With Rails, most stores seem to be developed on a Mac. I am wondering if the same is true for PHP.

Answer 1

In most PHP development homes, you will debug and run your code in a test environment that mimics a production environment. So you can use the OS / editor / IDE of your choice, and everything should work out fine. One of the advantages of PHP over other languages ​​of web services (ASP.net and others) is that it is multi-platform. I’m more worried about things like the version control system, and how their production environment is, and not which desktop OS you will have to use, since these are variables that are locked in stone, and your desktop computer is not.

Answer 2

A simple answer would be more people using PCs, so developers are developing PHP on PCs. I am using Linux.

Answer 3

All of them can do this very well, I would just make sure that you are comfortable with all 3 operating systems. My office does ASP.net development almost exclusively, and the guy next to me is developing on a Mac! In principle, as a professional, you need to be able to jump on anything and be able to develop on it.

When I did PHP, I developed XP, deployed to Linux, FWIW.

Answer 4

Unnecessary. I use Linux and Windows, but it doesn’t really matter, because on both I use the same editors (ActiveState Komodo and Zend Studio), both of which are also available for Mac.

Answer 5

There is no limiting factor regarding the language itself. We are a pure PHP development environment and all of our developers use a Mac. But that would not be a problem if any of them used Windows windows or Linux packages for development. The only problem would be that the company had development tools that were supposed to run on a specific platform. Short answer: it depends on where you get the job.

Answer 6

I saw several companies in their job advertisements saying that they use a Mac for development. In fact, although I think it was just supposed to be a "cool" factor. I bet they will let you use whatever PHP you would like to develop, until your PHP + Apahce / IIS / any configuration is a million miles from what is used on production servers.

Answer 7

I don't think this should make a big difference when it comes to a web programming script like PHP or JavaScript, unless you are part of a specific development environment or something else. I do all the web programming code in a notepad editor, but it doesn't seem like it would be so hard to code in the same way on a Mac or Linux box, or even a Blackberry.

Answer 8

I have been working on Windows XP all the time.

To develop PHP at work, I use Nusphere PHP Ed for Windows. It has many useful features, such as debugging and code mining, but I found that it is a little unstable for software that costs money. However, if you don't mind it freezing so often and wanting to pay for it, this is a great PHP IDE for Windows.

My personal favorite is Eclipse with the PHP IDE project plug-in (there are several options), if you use it, it doesn't matter which OS you use (it works on PC, Mac and Linux).

Answer 9

I would say that PHP is more about windows, since it has existed much longer and probably extends to other development environments.

Answer 10

I do most of my hard development on Linux. If you use Linux servers, like us, and your site uses certain services, it is best to maintain the development platform as close as possible to the target server.

I use a Mac for personal development, but I don’t like it because I am on Linux.

I am sure that many people use Windows for web development, since most people use a full stop of Windows, and I see no reason why not, if that is what they prefer. I do not do this.

Answer 11

I am currently doing all my PHP development on a macbook using the Centos virtual box. This is great because you do not need to install anything on your actual mac separately from the virtual box as free. It takes about 1 or 2 hours to properly configure the guest, and you can be on the go. From there, I use Eclipse PHP to actually develop the code.

Answer 12

I like to work on Windows 7, and the IDE is Sublime Text, which is also convenient for Mac users. The OS really doesn't matter for PHP development, as it depends on several OSs.

My PHP environment setup:

• Windows 7
• Sublime text
• Xampp Server
• Git