Local or Web host?

I am pretty new to WordPress and am wondering about developing and keeping WordPress on my machine “or” doing it all from the web?

I’ve installed, uninstalled, gotten a new domain name, etc., with my WordPress blog. I ran into issues all across the board with trying to replicate a previous blog. I didn’t know where files were, I had to go to several different URLs to look and see what was where. I failed to realize that I needed to “export” from the WordPress panel (as opposed to copying files with FTP), and am just creating a mess everywhere.

My small bit of knowledge with Dreamwever, iWeb, and other tools have given me a bit of a developer’s knowledge, but WordPress is a new way of thinking.

I’m wondering if it would benefit me to keep everything on my local machine — if that, in fact, is what “local hosting” does?

Thanks for any help ??