As mentioned in Chapter 1, Getting Started with PhoneGap, you can work either with Eclipse, Xcode or Visual Studio. Each tool has its pros and cons. However, if you would like to create some custom plugins for your apps, you may want to consider using all of them.
One of the main advantages of Apache Cordova and its PhoneGap distribution is that you can build mobile applications in the browser using web standards and well-known technologies. This is the reason why you can use either a text editor or an integrated development environment (IDE) when working on PhoneGap apps; most of the time you will work on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. The difference between a text editor and an IDE is that an IDE understands the programming language, whereas a text editor understands text. Depending on the task at hand, some developers prefer to work with an editor rather than an IDE.
Let's take a look at the main features of some different tools: Sublime Text, IntelliJ IDEA, Adobe Brackets...