
Call me biased. But I have been a .NET developer for almost 10 years and before that when I was a Java programmer I still used Visual Studio (Remember Visual J++).
And for me it's the best editor a guy can have (if you don't count that fact that it’s slow and heavy).
When I joined TicTacTi I started programming also in AS2 and then AS3. When asking other flash developers, sorry flash designers what editor they are using they all said CS3 with a big smile. But a developer can’t ask a designer a question like this. CS3/4 and probably also 5 are made for designers and not developers and if you like to write more than 10 lines of code don’t go near this editor.
When we started to write in AS3 we started using Eclipse.
Well, this is an editor. But it’s an Open source editor and as such it takes 10 manual pages and 2 full days to learn how to install it so it will compile a simple hello world application. (Why can’t open source application use the wizard concept?J)
At first I had problem understanding the Perspective issue, or the fact that F3 is not used for search.
After awhile I even found out that you can do things with it that you can’t in Visual Studio like compile on the fly, move few rows at once (using Ctrl+Up/Down arrow)
But, what cracks me was a simple task I had to do. I like to compile the code and then run a simple batch file. Simple??? Yes it’s simple if you understand how to write ANS, or some other compiler code. In VS a simple checkbox would allow me to run as much batch file as I like.
I will say this I’m working with Eclipse but every few months I’m looking at different add-on that allow you to write AS code using VS. So far it takes about 10 min of work before I find out that something is missing and the add-on is not ready yet for a real AS application.
So far the Tofino is the best add-on but it’s still isn’t perfect, although I must say that their support team is doing a great job and they did try to help me migrate to Tofino.
I will update this post when I will find a good add-on because I’m sure I will not be an Eclipse developer forever.