What if I don't use Laravel Homestead?

Question

I am very new to laravel, I saw that in every laravel tutorial there is Laravel homestead which is confusing for new learners. In fact, until now i don't understand what it is and why we are using it?

My question is very simple - can new learners start without homestead? Also I just wanted to know the importance of Laravel homestead in a very simple terms.

Answer 1

Laravel Homestead is just a virtual machine (VM). It helps in preventing polluting your development environment. Assume you have two projects. One project is based on Laravel 4 and the other is based on Laravel 5.3. Developing and testing of the two projects Without using a VM would land you into some problems. Do you install two web servers on you development machine?

Laravel docs do not go into the basics of why or hand hold you on the process. I would strongly recommend you look for Jump Start PHP Environment by Bruno Skvorc. It is a short book but it holds your hand into why you need Homestead and also guides on how to configure the box.

Answer 2

Yes, you can learn without using homestead. Homestead is just a ready to go server instance that shares files with your host machine. It comes prepackaged with the 'recommended' versions of packages, so that all you need to do is spin it up and you're good to go. Some people can you wamp, or something similar, but keep in mind that all package dependencies and versions have to be updated and managed manually that way. I recommend finding a good tutorial for homestead to help get you setup, because its much easier to set it up than it is to setup a server on your own.