What is a local development environment and how is it different from a product environment?

A local development environment allows you to use your own machine to run your website. Product environment provided by a web hosting company. You can customize local dev. without worrying that it’ll affect your live site, as well as make and test site development before uploading your site.

Why is it important to use a local environment for development? Why is it especially important for developing and maintaining a WordPress site?

We can make mistakes in the changes we make by playing with the codes. These errors can break the website we are preparing. It is always safer to work locally and then add the code changes we will make to our website.

Do you prefer your local environment to look exactly like your production environment, including the same content and posts? Why or why not?

Depends on what you are looking. When I try to change something, I want to see same environment but also I can want to add some extra development and keeping them without publish it.