My development cycle: Develop code fragments on local machine (Win2k, using Ultraedit for the text editing and Cygwin's Perl for the engine), then begin to develop on development server (Sun box) again using Ultraedit on local and it's nice FTP save/load features, and a simple telnet session to it.

Version control is Sourcesafe (We're mainly a Java environment here, and that interfaces well with JBuilder- or so I've been told), but isn't used overmuch as I'm maybe a bit too lazy in that respect.

I find this gives me a nice balance between total control of my environment to see just what modules I will need, and the final version on the test server. The reason I'm wary is that any module installed on test should really also get put onto production machines, and with the natural reluctance of the people running that server I'd rather not have to ask for too much.

The database I use is always the test Oracle box, and it's rare I use webservers but when I do it's Apache running on local and on the test machine.

Previously I've tended to SSH into the remote machine and use Vi, but just getting happy with the setup I have now. I have come to like Ultraedit.