Setting up the SharePoint Framework development environment is not a difficult task. In fact, it is straightforward and downright easy, but on the other hand, it is completely different from what a SharePoint developer has experienced before. First of all, you don't need to install the SharePoint farm to your local machine. That is a big change. You can set up the development environment on a computer with the SharePoint farm installed, but you don't benefit from having it. The second major difference is that you don't need a licensed version of Visual Studio anymore; in fact, you do better currently with free Visual Studio Code or some other editor of your choice.
You can set up your development environment on Windows, Mac, or Linux. In the following sections, we will go through how to set up your environment on Windows.