Development vs Staging vs Production: What's the Difference?

The lines between development, staging, and production environments are often blurred. The distinctions may vary depending on many factors, including:

• the scale of the organization,


• the codebase, or


• whether you're viewing the environment from a product, unit testing, or security standpoint.

In this post, I use interviews with fellow developers to understand each environment's purpose and how it's distinct from the others. It's particularly challenging to differentiate between the development and staging environments, and some organizations forgo the staging environment …

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