Getting Started with Vagrant for Local Development

Developing Locally

Developing Locally

Vagrant's motto is "Development Environments Made Easy". The truth is, this should really be "Professional Development Environments Made Easy".

It's not easy until you learn it. And, learning it by yourself can be scary. Fortunately we will cover everything in a super digestible and easy-to-understand format.

Why develop locally?

Local development refers to the process of building a website or app from the comfort of a virtual server (aka, your laptop), and not needing to be connected to the Internet or remote server to code.

This way if you need to code with some programming language that has specific server requirements, you can simulate the environment on your computer.

Developing locally is easier, faster, not totally Internet dependent, professional, portable, and fun.

Old Ways People Develop Locally

Developing locally in the past was a nightmare. Here's some examples:

  • XAMPP / WAMP / MAMP (broken nightmare)
  • Apache locally (death by config)
  • Configure VM Manually (sad complex overhead)

"I just want to code!". Local development comes with overhead. You literally need to "simulate" an environment for your code to run. This is no easy task and can lead to things constantly breaking - network stuff, dev stuff, whatever on your computer.

It can get out-of-control, and it quickly can put you in a situation where you're re-formatting your computer. It's okay to admit that we've all been there.

Fortunately, Vagrant makes this easier and a thing of the past.