Setting Up a Home Dev/Testing Environment?

An anonymous reader writes "I'm a Project Manager (hold the remarks) who recently decided that I want/need to get my dev skills more up-to-date, as more projects are looking for their PM's to be hands-on with the development. Looking around my house, I have quite the collection of older (read: real old — it's been a while) PCs — it's pretty much a PC graveyard. Nothing that would really help me set up a nice dev infrastructure for developing web/database apps. So, my question is as follows: Should I buy a number of cheaper PC's, or should I buy one monster machine and leverage (pick your favorite) virtual machine technology?"

Comments

Just Don't!

[NerdENerd]

If you are a PM then stay out of the code! Seriously it does not help for PM's to start getting into the code. Focus your time on usability and business requirements but please don't go thinking you will help anyone by getting your hands dirty. Just the fact you are asking this question means you are not the sort of person who should be coding.