View http://www.rarst.net/wordpress/in-phpstorm/
Andrey Savchenko aka @Rarst is someone on my short list of developers to which I stop, drop, and listen. Recently a post went up outlining a ton of awesome WordPress-specific details to utilize when using PhpStorm, which happens to be a big part of my development environment for many of the reasons covered therein. It took me a long time to get over my foundationless anti-Java rage but once I did I haven’t looked back from PhpStorm.
(That is until Wes Bos had to go and write a sweet book on Sublime Text with awesome videos that had me coveting the Java-less, wicked fast, awesomeness of that editor, but I digress)
I’ve come to fully embrace the value of a full-on IDE in PhpStorm, and it’s for many of the reasons outlined in this article and more. Primarily I have latched on to Xdebug in a big way and it’s something I don’t see myself turning from. Not having to print_r(), die(), or var_dump() all day long is something I greatly enjoy. Combine that with PhpStorm’s recent WordPress-specific support and I’m more sold than ever.