[frik]

That's a very good point. Working from train often means spotty internet connection. So it's hard to instantly look up something in Google. A good offline documentation helps. For older languages and IDEs like C and C++ and Visual Studio 2005 like 10 years there were CHM help files for everything. Nowadays almost everything is available almost only as web help, if there is even an official full documentation at all. Also like 10 years ago, books came with an CHM file on CD/download. Nowadays books are already outdated when the get published, things like App and Web development is moving very fast. So starting a new project on train is not a good idea, fixing bugs from error/warning messages isn't a good idea, but doing some maintenance/refactoring work is well suited for boring train rides.

[kentonv]

Honestly it's absurd that the Caltrain doesn't have wifi yet. So many non-techy cities have it on their commuter rail lines...

[praneshp]

It's not absurd to me anymore, I "get" how CA, and the bay area especially, operate now :) I've heard good things about Verizon, and I personally use a Project Fi phone as a hotspot. It's decent enough for hackernews/reddit/google/stackoverflow, except for the tunnels right outside the city.