There isn’t any learning curve using puphet.com on a Linux based machine like a mac. There can be problems on windows but much less problems long term when extensions need to be installed. I’m running a vm on a surface with windows 10. The only problem I’ve run into is setting up the Samba file sync. Everything else has worked like a charm and using Samba is optional.
I don’t have anything against developers using Xamp/Wamp. In fact I think it is the developers responsibility to manage their own lical environment. If that what their comfortable with it is fine. I just don’t want to see it become a problem with when other things are needed like extensions and they have no idea how to add those things or modify their local environment. A perfect example is xdebug. I’ve worked with several epeople who don’t use xdebug simply because they don’t know how to add it to their local environment.
Using puphpet adding xdebug is a matter of just checking a box, any extension for that matter almost is. Which is one of many reasons why I do believe puphpet.com is far superior than Wamp/Xamp. Nothing is faster than simply adding a line to a Yaml file to install extensions and other various software packages commonly used in dev environments.
I also work on multiple projects with different environments. That is much easier to manage on vms than a single machine. I think a fair amount of developers are probably responsible for projects on different environments and with different versions of php, extensions, etc. The Mamp/Xamp people just cope and hope everything “works”. Where as I actually have separate vms to much more closely imitate each separate project environment.