In the past I have used the Central administrator to add lists, document libraries, apps, site collection, etc. and I did not use the visual Studio to create any of these items. But now as I gained more experience on SharePoint , so I need to know if I should start using Visual Studio to develop things such as list, announcement lists, document libraries instead of using central administrator UI.?
Second question currently I move my SharePoint web site from one environment tot another , by backuping a site collection and restore it on the new environment. But I am thinking of a scenario where a client might ask to modify an already existing site collection. So in this way I need to find a way to develop let say a list and a content type on one environemnt , then to be able to move these new items to another site collection , without having to restore the whole site collection.