I read the Andrew Binstock editorial in the latest issue of SD Times, "PHP debuts, Delphi returns, and C++ tapers off". At first, based on the title, it didn't seem worth reading. But it's short and it was half-time at the soccer match, so...
I didn't realize that Embarcadero purchased Delphi (among other items) from Borland years ago. They just released RAD Studio XE (http://www.embarcadero.com/). As mentioned, it supports Delphi XE, a few other interesitng and powerful tools, and RadPHP XE.
This is an interesting IDE in that it has built in support and tools for:
- testing
- static code analysis
- metrics dashboard
- visual build tool
- widgets for REST transactions
- Facebook interaction (FML?)
- Google Maps.
What really piqued my interest was this feature (quoting from Binstock): "Cloud platforms are also integrated, with app deployment available to Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure directly from the IDE."
Yes, it's not the typical PHP developers IDe in that, well, it isn't free. But the ability to publish directly to the cloud (a la LightSwitch) has a lot of potential to extend the Azure market to include PHP shops.