My friend is a Chromebook user / programmer, and I’m thinking about following him.
He knows VIM and does all his development on a linux instance that costs $ 10 / mo at linode.com. I think the Chromebook paradigm is that you store your actions inside Chrome.
You can lose a lot of time by saving the development environment on your laptop, regardless of its OS.
In the meantime, VPS can be used from anywhere, even when your laptop dies or you forget your power cable at home.
If you are new to software development, I bet Cloud9 is the best place to start, although I haven't tried it yet.
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