An environment is a distinct computing context where software runs, such as development, staging, or production. Each environment may have different configurations, environment variables, databases, and levels of security. Environments help teams test changes safely before releasing them to users. They are managed through infrastructure setups, deployment processes, and configuration files.
Why it matters
Environments prevent unfinished or experimental features from affecting real users. They support reproducibility by ensuring that teams test code in contexts similar to production. Properly separating environments reduces outages and improves deployment reliability.
Examples
Running software locally during development, deploying to a test environment for QA, and promoting stable builds to production. The lesson Development vs Production Environments covers environment differences.