I have been pretty satisfied with previous releases from Zend and their Studio IDE. This time seems they got a few things wrong.. I know its free and we shouldn’t complain but I really do hate being a QA tester when there is no where to register your frustrations. I do try posting on the Zend IBM i forums but they seem to have less attention than ever!
I was starting to experience a couple of issues with Studio 7.2.1 so when Zend made the announcement about 8.0 I thought OK time to make the move as it should clear up a lot of the problems. Bad move! They have removed the IBM connection which used to allow a direct connection to the IBM i, they now only allow the SSH connections (not a really bad thing as it always worked better anyhow) but why? I am developing the PHP code on a ZendServer running on a Windows PC which may be part of the problem, but why? Now when I open a file the IDE freezes up for 2 minutes for some reason, then comes back and allows me to edit the files again. I thought opening all the files all at once would help, but it seems to take 2 minutes for every file! I say 2 minutes but it could be slightly less as I have never actually timed it but it is a long time..
I am now into un-installing the 8.0 release and trying to find a copy of the V7.2 release again so I can at least do some work without punching holes in the screen.. I should probably look at the Net Beans IDE as a replacement but that will mean learning a new IDE again!
If like me you are experiencing issues log them on the forums, they may not get answered but at least people will see the frustrations people are experiencing with poor QA’d software.
Chris..
