Every few months as I sit at my desk and code away, I can't help but wonder to myself, "Is there anything better out there?" I'm not being metaphysical or introspective -- I'm talking about my integrated development environment (IDE). Most coders I've met are the same way: we find a tool we like, use it for a while, but usually end up wanting something more or different. Perhaps discontent is a core part of human nature, but every few months I go looking for better tools.

I'm one of "those" people that paid for Eclipse, an open source integrated development environment (IDE). I originally bought it because I love and use Eclipse a lot for my work and I wanted commercially available support for the product on which I depend so heavily.

Zend recently released version 6.1 of Studio for Eclipse, with very little (if any) fanfare or announcements (I didn't know about it until I looked at the download site), compared to the release of 6.0.1 which was heralded in their newsletter, all over their website, and everywhere Zend's press team has any influence. I find this ironic, because 6.1 contains huge improvements and more fixes than the upgrade to 6.0.1 did.