[Ologn]

Yes. My laptop is not on the lowest end of the scale, but over the past week my IDE has alternated between vi and emacs on my VPS as I edit Python scripts. I don't need a lot of local power to do that - years ago I was doing that type of thing from VT100 terminals.

[b_t_s]

You don't even have to offload the processing to a server unless you're working with a compiled language. Python/ruby/node/any other interpreted language plus PostgreSQL, plus a text editor like atom, plus a couple browser tabs should all run together just fine on a chomebook. I was comfortable running a setup like that 5 years ago a single core 1.6ghz atom netbook. Nowadays my cell phone probably has enough raw horsepower to run all that, compatibility issues aside.