This is one of those products that tries to be helpful, and fails miserably.

From the very first line of code, this editor did everything it possibly could to make the experience of using it as painful as possible.

When I'm coding, I'm typing straight from brain to page. I'm not thinking "Is the editor going to do this?" I'm thinking "The code should do that."

Not with this editor. Start with something simple:

$var = "This is a string";

Simple enough, you'd probably type it in without thinking about it. And you'd end up with is this:

$var = "this is a quote\";
"
When you start typing the quote, it "helpfully" adds a close quote. So when you - trying to write code, not second-guess some antagonistic piece of software - type in the close quote, semi colon and hit enter, you get the mess presented above.

The entire experience is like that. Random things popping in and out where you least expect them. "Smart" tabs that aren't in the slightest degree smart. Space removal at the end of lines which apparently only removes spaces - not tabs.

In ten minutes, instead of writing ten minutes' worth of code, I wrote perhaps 30 seconds' worth of code and spent the rest of the time fighting the editor.

Applications, especially programming tools, should be designed to shut up, get out of the way and not interfere with the concentration of those using them.

The design of this application, by contrast, is to use every conceivable option to ensure you *cannot* simply write code, that you *have to* concentrate on what the editor itself is doing, and making sure it is not screwing up every single line you write.

That is not a helpful program. It is a program to be avoided at all possible costs. The few things it sort of gets right - code completion and syntax highlighting - are simply not sufficient to suffer through the sheer agony of having to use such a pointlessly hostile tool.

Avoid it at all costs.