why develop on a local computer when building for the web?

Kay V on 1 November 2018

Research summary:

Experts agree that web development should happen locally. Their reasoning may differ slightly, but all reinforce the arguments against changing code/configuration directly on production servers. 

One title from the list below may seem to suggest a contrary view: Why You Should Stop Installing Your WebDev Environment Locally — Smashing Magazine. The author makes a finer distinction, actually advocating for local development, but recommending against the once-common practice of reconfiguring your computer's native operating system for each project. According to the article, you should run a container on your local machine instead, replicating your server environment in that container.

{
  "title": "serch terms at DuckDuckGo: why local web development",
  "url": "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+local+web+development&t=osx&ia=qa",
  "publication_date": "2018-10-30"
}, {
  "title": "build environment - Web developers - Is it better to do development on your local machine or on a remote host? - Stack Overflow",
  "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/250063/web-developers-is-it-better-to-do-development-on-your-local-machine-or-on-a-re#250091",
  "publication_date": "2018-10-30"
}, {
  "title": "Dealing with files - Learn web development | MDN",
  "url": "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Getting_started_with_the_web/Dealing_with_files",
  "publication_date": "2018-10-30"
}, {
  "title": "Why You Should Stop Installing Your WebDev Environment Locally — Smashing Magazine",
  "url": "https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/04/stop-installing-your-webdev-environment-locally-with-docker/",
  "publication_date": "2018-10-30"
}

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