That reminds me of how I got started with Drupal. I was so scared of
botching up an install on a "server" that I ran XAMPP and ran my first
Drupal install on a USB key!


On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Joe Hourcle
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> On Nov 2, 2012, at 2:09 PM, Mita Williams wrote:
>
> > +1 to web-hosting as it gives the ability install one's own software on
> > one's domain (which feels great) *and* easy access to shell.
> >
> > And when web-hosting feels like too much of a barrier to access, sites
> like
> > jsfiddle where you can immediately start adding *and* sharing code is
> key.
> > IMHO the initial appeal of Code Academy was that it removed all barriers
> to
> > getting started.  Getting a laptop's localhost set up is too daunting
> for a
> > first step, I think.
>
> If that's a problem for people, it might be worth looking at the various
> *AMP (LAMP, WAMP, MAMP) stacks for an easy install of Apache, mySQL + perl
> / python / php.
>
> We're probably moving away from locally hosted services towards 'the cloud'
> for the most part (remember when they used to be called 'service
> providers'?)
> but it's still useful to learn a little something about configuring a
> webserver / database / etc.
>
> And it's generally more locked down in the various *AMP stacks than if
> you went and installed them individually, so there aren't quite the
> same level of problems w/ security.
>
> -Joe
>