Stop Worshipping the Cloud: Local Development Provides Security at Speed
Vanessa Gennarelli
While Cloud IDEs and containerized environments have contributed key innovations, some forward-thinking teams are quietly realizing a hard truth: developers do their best work locally—and sometimes the cloud is a costly distraction.
In my recent talk hosted by LocalStack, I suggest that “secure” doesn’t mean “centralized,” and speed doesn’t require Kubernetes.
Cloud-Native Isn’t the Future—It’s the Bottleneck
Virtualization and cloud-based dev environments may look good on paper, but in practice:
- They require a PhD in DevOps just to set up.
- They slow down dev cycles with performance overhead and fragile abstractions.
- They quietly rack up cloud bills while your team wrestles with YAML files.
Worse, they take developers out of their native environments—killing focus, wasting battery life, and introducing fragile dependencies you’ll pay for later.
“Works on my machine” isn’t the problem—it’s the goal.
If every machine is consistently configured, local-first development becomes the most reliable, ergonomic, and secure option. Local-first development offers critical advantages:
- Onboards devs in hours, not days.
- Eliminates the constant “can I get access to…” requests.
- Slashes cloud spend and boosts performance.
- Strengthens security by minimizing third-party exposure and reducing credentials.
Check out the full talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U90yACw64Hk
Workbrew: Security Without the Cloud Chains
Workbrew manages secure Homebrew environments at scale—without containers, without VMs, and without compromise.
From full-package visibility to instant patching, it brings fleet-wide control to what was once a Wild West of local setups.