Isolated Development
Isolated Development is a software development methodology that emphasizes creating and testing code in isolated, self-contained environments to ensure consistency, reproducibility, and minimal interference from external dependencies. It involves using tools like containers, virtual machines, or sandboxed setups to mimic production environments locally, reducing 'it works on my machine' issues. This approach helps developers work independently without affecting others' work or the main codebase.
Developers should adopt Isolated Development when working on complex projects with multiple dependencies, team collaborations, or when deploying to varied production environments to avoid configuration drift and ensure reliable testing. It is particularly useful in microservices architectures, CI/CD pipelines, and when onboarding new team members, as it standardizes the development setup and speeds up debugging by isolating issues to specific environments.