What Does IDE Mean?

Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a system of software tools used by programmers for software development. It usually includes text editor, compiler, interpreter, facilities of automation developing, software assembling and debugger. Sometimes it also includes means for integration with version control systems and a variety of tools to simplify the design of the graphical user interface. Many modern development environments also include a viewing window of software classes, object inspector and a diagram of the class hierarchy, which is used in object-oriented software development. The majority of modern IDE are designed for developing programs in several programming languages simultaneously.

The Most Useful Tools of Laravel Development Environment

In order to choose the most suitable Laravel development environment it is necessary to look through the list of available tools.

1. Software JetBrains PhpStorm is a specialized web development tool aimed at web applications and other types of programs that can be created using PHP language and with the use of HTML, JavaScript and CSS. PhpStorm Solution provides deployment and synchronization of projects through the FTP protocol. PhpStorm environment provides automatic completion of the PHP language constructs in the code, code inspections, various algorithms of refactoring and quick code navigation. Any Laravel Angular JS developer will mention this tool as a must-have one.
2. Laravel Homestead is formally prepared Vagrant “box”, which provides an excellent development environment without the mandatory installation of PHP, HHVM, web server and any other software on the computer. Homestead runs on any Windows, Mac, or Linux; it includes a web server Nginx, PHP 5.6, MySQL, Postgres, Redis, Memcached and all other useful things that are needed to develop amazing Laravel applications;
3. NetBeans IDE is a free integrated development environment with open source for software developers. IDE provides all the tools needed to create professional desktop application, corporate, web and mobile applications on the Java platform, as well as C / C ++, PHP, JavaScript, Groovy, and Ruby;
4. Laravel IDE Helper Generator. This is a package, which is based on the code used in your application; it generates a file helper, having generated static classes of facades. Classes are not used by the application, and are only needed for the IDE auto completion;
5. Laravel DebugBar is a package that allows quickly and easily monitoring the application during its development. Thanks to its simple setup and powerful features, DebugBar is one of the best development environment for Laravel. It is very handy tool that allows you to control and debug code. You will always know how many queries took place, how much time they took, what was included into the log. It also gives an opportunity to see information about the current user, types used to generate a page, transferred data and more.

Choosing Best Development Environment for Laravel

Deciding what the best IDE for Laravel development is, it is necessary to come from the specifics of a certain project in order to select the tool with the most effective instruments.  As we can see, there are different variants of the software; however, the right choice can only be made considering individual characteristics of the future application and having consulted your dedicated Laravel developer.