I think it's better if the devs run something close to the production environment.
The problem is, web developers already have a lot on their plate.
LAMP. The operating system, the web server, the database, and the scripting language. Plus HTML, Javascript, and CSS. And all the frameworks that "simplify" making these work together nicely. Then they have to figure out how to deploy on the test and prod servers. Oh, and they better back everything up. And some redundancy would be good.
Not to mention having some domain knowledge. The above is fine for a to-do list, but they might also need to know how to solve "real" problems, not just do IT.
"I think it's better if the devs run something close to the production environment."
I used to think so too, but I changed my mind a few years ago. Have diversity in the environment in the phases leading up to staging/testing leads to many problems being uncovered early - hardcoded paths, platform assumptions, potential performance issues that only show under some circumstances, ...
I think it improves the code if various devs use different installation paths, DB's, development tools and even OS's. I've seen many deployment issues that would have trivially been detected if devs had different environments.
The problem is, web developers already have a lot on their plate.
LAMP. The operating system, the web server, the database, and the scripting language. Plus HTML, Javascript, and CSS. And all the frameworks that "simplify" making these work together nicely. Then they have to figure out how to deploy on the test and prod servers. Oh, and they better back everything up. And some redundancy would be good.
That's on top of the existing requirements:
- VCS - Bug tracking - Documentation - Project management (Scrum? PMI? Flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants?) - UX / UI design - Unit tests
Not to mention having some domain knowledge. The above is fine for a to-do list, but they might also need to know how to solve "real" problems, not just do IT.