The Industry Standard Trap If you look at any “Modern Web Dev” tutorial, Step 1 is almost always: Install Docker.

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A solo Rails developer argues that Docker in local development is unnecessary overhead for individual developers, citing Mac file system latency (0.5s vs 4s test startup), excessive RAM usage (2GB+ vs ~200MB), and the irrelevance of environment parity when you're the only developer. The proposed native alternative uses Mise for version management, Postgres.app, Redis via Homebrew, and Overmind for process management. Docker is still recommended for deployment via Kamal, treating containers as a packaging format rather than a development environment.

Why I Stopped Using Docker in Development

1. The File System Friction (The “Mac” Problem)

Sometimes i just disagree.
Nothing beats downloading a docker-compose.yaml somewhere and having everything running in a few minutes. Especially if i already have experience with docker and its already installed.

This is just crap.
All of it is wrong.
Do not read this.
Utter crap.

Author’s first mistake: using MacOS.
Move to linux, get docker almost native performance, problem solved.

You might give Orbstack a go for better docker performance on MacOS

I highly suggest uninstalling Docker Desktop and use Orbstack if you are on mac. You just can’t beat the performance and Efficiency 🚀