This sheds light on what your colleagues use to write code.

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Sharing knowledge is tough. Every company’s developers have their own idiosyncrasies: is EAV pronounced “E-A-V” or “Eve” (as in those NSFW stores)?

We perform this research to level the playing field. Research is one thing—but what will you do with it? We take this knowledge, put trajectories and predictions on it, and present it to you. We are hyper-focused on our craft and this information informs decisions on critical points.

When we are evaluating our developer onboarding experience, this report informs the following questions:

  • How much RAM should we put into our new developer machines? Is it worth the extra $400 to go with 64GB?
  • What toolset should we use? Warden, LAMP stack, or Mark Shust’s development environment?
  • Is there a better IDE than PhpStorm?

But we took this year’s conversation even deeper to answer more systemic questions:

  • What system is the best for Continuous Integration for Adobe Commerce?
  • What other ecommerce platforms are on the rise?
  • Which themes have the most traction?

Our sample size is N=400.

Do you have specific questions? Join our Slack community here to get instant access to a vibrant community of ecommerce enthusiasts.

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Unique takeaways

What is the best IDE for Magento development?

PhpStorm. 78% of Adobe Commerce developers use this tool. Its capabilities are rich. It facilitates quality development with style advice and error checking. Git is fully integrated. Of course, Xdebug is too.

Is GitHub, GitLab, or BitBucket best for versioning Magento projects?

GitHub takes the cake at 38% adoption. BitBucket is next in line at 35% and GitLab takes up last place with almost 23%. While we, at SwiftOtter, use Atlassian tools for project management, we still prefer GitHub—if for no other reason than the user interface and the prevalence of GitHub Actions.

What is the best environment for developing in Magento?

There are plenty of choices:

  • Warden (or SwiftOtter’s fork, Den)
  • Mark Shust’s Docker
  • MAMP / WAMP
  • MDOQ
  • A custom Docker build

The report covers the community’s preferences along with a basic comparison of the top two contenders.

The key point is that there is almost no other option but to use a Docker-based environment. Don’t be “that guy” and roll your own. Instead use one that exists and submit pull requests to fix annoying problems (but they are pretty few, if any).