Well, theres always the cloud. Chromebooks aren't intended to be the most powerful of machines (hahaha, pixelbook), but you could try out codeanywhere or the upcoming coder to offload the work somewhere else.
That way, you won't have to go into developer mode, compromising security and what not.
You can also wait for crostini to release...
I use a chromebook as well and tried nearly every online IDE (including Nitrous and C9) but now I sticked with codeanywhere.com
But I can definitely can confirm that it's awesome for tinkering and working on the go but I could not ditch my dual monitor desktop for it but that has nothing to do with the OS.
I use codeanywhere.com there as well so if you won't use the computer for something else like photoshop and its likes or gaming I would say go with a chromebox, otherwise I would stick with Windows or Mac if you're willing to invest a little more, but if it's just plain coding the chromebox will be awesome!
And I can really recommend codeanywhere.com because it offers VMs, FTP connections and SSH with private keys on top of it.
Here's a if you want to try though you can go ahead and click the non-referral ones, if you want :)
http://codeanywhere.com/referralsignup/?r=3c384439682d323061