John. You have hitherto been working within a much more powerful, interesting and rewarding environment than the one which you're thinking of emigrating to. Therefore, you should spend about a month on checking out the environment which sounds so attractive to you.
The following is a quick step-by-step guide on how you can do this. I will use the Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) environment as an example, but you could use the Microsoft environment if you choose; this guide would still apply, but you would need to adapt it for a Microsoft environment.
1. Buy one of those refurbished Dell 64-bit computers which are currently doing the rounds on Amazon or Ebay. Shouldn't cost you more than £100 max; but by now you should be able to pick up something like a 1 TB quad-core 8 GB memory machine for about £60 or £70.
2. Wipe the Windows 10 OS that your new computer comes with, and install Linux CentOS 8. (I can help you with this.) CentOS 8 is the latest stable version which will keep you going for about the next decade until they deprecate it. Don't install anything fancy like entertainment applications - reserve this machine as your
very serious software development box, and ignore all update notifications. There are other flavours of Linux, but I specify CentOS because that's what I know.
3. For the time being, forget about "the cloud" because, just like a real cloud, the term is somewhat nebulous for beginners, but is actually quite simple to understand once you've learned the basics of web application development, which is very simple compared to what you've been doing for the last 20 years.
4. Your new CentOS 8 installation should include Apache and PHP, but you may have to upgrade the PHP from 5 to 7. This is quite easy to do from the command line, and again, I can help you with this. If you're not familiar with an OS command line (which I guess you are after 20 years), then start using it now - it's much more powerful than a GUI for this type of work. The distro will also include other goodies such as Java, C++/Qt, Python, etc..
5. Install MySQL.
6. Give me a shout and I will send you a beginner's guide on how to set up multiple websites on your localhost, along with other material such as how to use the file manager to FTP and SSH to remote servers - i.e. remote websites with the same LAMP setup as your local setup.
7. After spending a couple of intensive weeks on familiarising yourself with your new system, you can then start investigating what this "cloud" thing is all about, but be prepared for something of an anti-climax because, for developers, it's really not that interesting!
For someone who's done this a few times, all of the above is possible in one day, but I estimate that you should allow about a week, which will be fun, but of course you should anticipate a little pain!
The guide above is an overview. There are of course some details, but no real nasty devils in those details! One detail I would mention here is the installation of the xfce GUI. The latest resident Linux GUIs are awful because they're heading towards all that 'tapping' and 'swiping' stuff which, as you will know, is just no good for software developers.
I can be here to guide you as best I can if you wish. And I don't know where you're located, but if you ever want to drop by for the odd face-to-face session, then feel free to give me a shout and I'll put the kettle on.
