Rant: everyone (devs, designers, PMs) on a web project should be able to spin up a local dev environment in <2hrs, using their preferred hardware and a README 1/x

This is a 2-way test: https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="1️⃣" title="Keycap digit one" aria-label="Emoji: Keycap digit one">the engineering team should have the build optimized + documented such that this task is relatively simple; &https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="2️⃣" title="Keycap digit two" aria-label="Emoji: Keycap digit two">the non-engineering team should have enough savvy to follow the recipe 2/x

If a relatively savvy user needs half a day & a lot of handholding to get a local build running, that’s a BAD PROJECT SMELL. It means the project exceeds its team’s capabilities. The source of the smell varies… 3/x

MAYBE:
… the project is too complex
… the architecture is too fragile/hardware dependent
… the team is too small for its ambitions
… you need dedicated ops ppl
… you need containerization
… your docs suck
… your team isn’t techy enough 4/x

But if a smarty user (yes even the project manager) can’t build a local environment in about two hours on their laptop using the README, something is off. 5/end

(this thread brought to you by The Dev Spending His Memorial Day Trying to Rebuild His Local After It Failed Randomly On Friday Afternoon)