I've been using Vagrant at work for a few months now - and I got into it specifically for mimicking our production environment. If you don't know about Vagrant, I highly suggest you check it out. I recently purchased an iMac and I'm utilizing Vagrant VMs for all development. That means I have a few select environments and my machine is bogged down with extra services or dependency issues.

MySQL command line allows you to manage your database environment through your terminal, or command prompt for Windows. Typically when you set up a web server you would have installed MySQL as its own service and can easily access the MySQL command line via mysql (mysql.exe).

With the new wave of mobile devices being a major way to access the Internet, it has become possible to customize web applications based on a user's location - or create web applications based on user location.

The easiest way to learn PHP is to be able to create and edit code and see instant results. When I was younger and learning I couldn't afford to have my own web server so I installed a WAMP environment - I also didn't have a spare machine laying around to toss Linux on.