If I am using windows, I use WSL2. With this i can treat it as any other Linux machine. You do not need to use docker, but If you did, it has nice integration with WSL.

In WSL, I use asdf for elixir/erlang/nodejs

This is also the best advice I can give as a Windows user.

I’ve been using WSL for the past 2 years with Elixir and the overall experience has been pretty good (especially after some WSL2 tweaks).

My main current machine runs Windows 10, and having come to it from Linux (Fedora) I’ll attest to WSL2 working remarkably well. I brought my Linux dotfiles along (making a few wsl-specific edits here and there), and I have an environment that feels pretty comfortable. Windows terminal is finally good enough to live in. From day to day I hardly notice that I’m effectively working in a VM. Performance is impressive - within a few percent of running Linux on bare metal. You can even use your GPU from WSL (though until the final WSLg release it involves running a Windows Insider build, so probably better to wait a few months for that).

Agree that adding the burden of learning Docker seems like an unnecessary barrier.