Development & Production Environments

[Coyx]

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone can answer me just one simple question.

Does it matter that the environment, including the setup, OS, MySQL and PHP versions are completely different between a Production Server and a Development Server for developing web-based software depending entirely on databases, php and the usual web languages?

I kind of know the answer already - but I want someone with lots of experience to clarify it for me, and explain why. It would be very very much appreciated! Thank you.

[pritaeas]

Why is simple. You want to be able to reproduce a production error/bug on your development system. Having identical setups for both will eliminate a lot of possibilities that the problem lies in version differences.