This is how long a request to /wp-admin takes when served by Apache, PHP and MySQL running in a Docker container:

$ curl 'http://localhost:8888/wp-admin/' ... -s -o /dev/null -w "%{time_starttransfer}\n"
0.371047

This is how long a request to /wp-admin takes when served by Apache, PHP and MySQL running natively on my computer:

$ curl 'http://wp-git-build.test/wp-admin/' ... -s -o /dev/null -w "%{time_starttransfer}\n"
0.060668

That’s a 310 ms difference! More than six times faster!

If you’re a WordPress contributor, you’re making thousands of these requests per day. You really owe it to yourself to take a bit of time and set up a fast development environment. You deserve it!

Here’s how to set up Apache, PHP, and MySQL for WordPress Core development using Homebrew and macOS.