Which region should your dev machine be in? Europe, US or Asia

A machine lives in one of four zones: Europe, US East, US West, or Asia. The software is identical in all of them. Two real things change with the choice: how far your keystrokes travel, and which jurisdiction the data sits in.

Latency you can feel

An interactive terminal is sensitive to round trips in a way a web page is not. Pick the zone closest to where you actually sit and the editor and shell feel local. Pick one across an ocean and you will notice the lag on every keystroke.

Where the data sits

• Europe keeps your machine and its data within the EU.
• US East and US West split North America between them — pick the coast you are nearer, because a transcontinental round trip is noticeable in a terminal.
• Asia is the right pick from South and East Asia.
• If a contract or policy dictates where data may reside, that decides it for you.

Why a zone and not a city

We name a part of the world rather than a datacentre because the datacentre is our problem, not yours. Which facility a zone resolves to can change — when capacity runs out, when a provider has a bad week, when a better room opens up nearby — and none of that should turn into a decision you have to make or an order you have to redo.

How to choose

Absent a rule that forces your hand, choose the nearest zone and move on. Latency is the difference you will live with every day; everything else about the machine is the same wherever it runs.