[a-l-e-c]

For me the journey kinda started by checking which was the most common way of installing PHP on the OS I'm using. If you're on MacOS then nothing beats homebrew. The main thing is to try and use the latest stable version and then go from there. This should make life easier when it's time to update or when you start to deal with having to install/enable certain extensions. I've tried setting up Docker but finally just set everything up in Debian so I can use VSCodium without issues. In production (for a newbie) I would just go with something like a small 5-10$ VPS running Ubuntu with Plesk control panel which will help you setup and keep things updated (you'll have the option/warning of changing PHP version for each website in the control panel)