As I mentioned in The Great Big Project Hunt, I’ve been wanting to see what options there are for not sullying my machine everytime
I want to try a new language or work on a new project. Docker is one of the options. This post is pretty old and out of date but does a good job of explaining the concepts.
In short, instead of installing all of the software (languages, databases, dependencies, etc.) locally, it seems like you can just install Docker (or if you’re on a Mac, Docker for Mac which seems to include Docker and Docker Compose, and possibly Docker Machine as well), and then mount folders from your local machine inside your running containers (and map ports if needed) so that you don’t have to jump through hoops to update files in the container to see your changes.
You’d still need to install some stuff onto a clean Mac (Apple developer tools, git, etc.) but it’s not a bad start.
Side bonus, it’s a good way for companies to streamline onboarding new developers, instead of the usual shitty first day of setting up a dev environment.