PHPStorm's XDebug integration is second to none, it has full MySQL integration, and it's autocomplete and click-through intelligence is incredibly smart.
I have tried atom, but I miss too many of PHPStorm's features. There is so much it can do, and so much intelligent functionality, but it all stays out of the way until you call upon it.
Without going into what I've tried and yadda yadda yadda, white noise, my credentials and so on - PHPStorm id the IDE. No Atom / VSCode or whatever can't compare. You get ctrl+click go to definition, you get ssh terminal, you get XDebug integration, it plays with Vue/ES6/React, you get MySQL integration, Vagrant integration, extensions to get VIM bindings and so on. Next to proper keyboard, monitor and mouse - buying PHPStorm is hands down one best money spent when it comes to what I work with every day.
I'm NOT saying "you can't get X with Y editor which is free" - sure, I believe you can, but this thing completely satisfies my every requirement and I don't have to spend time looking for integration extension or whatever. It saved me a ton of time so far, it will do so in future - I approve it, however I don't think anyone's editor "sucks and you should go with PHPStorm". Everyone should go for what they think brings them the best experience / value.
I'm not even an IDE -- I'm a strict Vim user, but when I had to work in PHP I found the experience to be very nice. Especially integrating with the debugger.
JetBrains' stuff is top notch and I will buy their IDE for any language I work in, even if I don't use it very often.
I remember that time when I couldn't get it why there isn't built-in terminal in the SublimeText and then I found windows managers like `sway` or `awesome` and I started do not care about it.
> PHPStorm's XDebug integration is second to none, it has full MySQL integration, and it's autocomplete and click-through intelligence is incredibly smart.
Support for XDebug exists in all modern editors - Atom, Sublime, NetBeans, etc. etc. If you "waste" some time on customizing your editor auto-completion feature you might will get a really decent one (in aforementioned editors).
I must say PHPStorm had a superior look-for-file (think: Ctrl+P) feature which really gets annoying in other editors if you get used to it.
About the MySQL integration: I was really positively surprised having it in the IDE but I've stopped using it as soon as my colleague told me about the HeidiSQL [0]. For person who was using SQL Management Studio at university, HeidiSQL offered the same feel - fast, lean and simple to use but also it is free and installation in Linux (wine) or macOS does not take much time. It is probably the best application written in Pascal that I know about.
It does, but PHPStorm's is particularly competent. From rewinding the stack, having an in-context command line prompt to run code in, conditional debug points, current context auto-complete for the command line, it can even read cachegrind outputs. It's the level of competence they implement in all their features that take it from a "text editor preference" to a professional level tool.
> I must say PHPStorm had a superior look-for-file (think: Ctrl+P) feature
You can also "look everywhere" which looks at literally everything from the same text-box, so if I type "show line numbers" it searches through the settings panes and finds the "show line numbers" setting, and because it's a toggle, I can just hit enter on the search result and it toggles the setting. Also class definitions (PHP, Javscript and CSS definitions) are all fuzzy searchable. "SoClNa" will find the SomeClassName definition and also the "Some/Class/Name" folder and so on.
I know I'm gushing about it but I really could talk for ages about all the little things it does.
Except PHPStorm I know many developers who got used to NetBeans IDE.
It won't make you dig around a dozen plugin to make it work in a decent way and even better than atom + plugins and what about $8/month?
[1] https://atom.io