Through things like Crouton you are able to install Linux on a Chromebook, thus drastically expanding the capabilities of a Chromebook. I have a HP Chromebook with Ubuntu and I am able to install most software that I need (e.g. node, npm, gulp, node-sass, visual studio code). While it would not be possible or effective to install Photoshop or Illustrator, you are still able to install most development software. Having a Chromebook is also very handy as it is quite light and has a great battery life, allowing me to always have a development machine. I would highly recomend a Chromebook as a cost-effective and portable secondary development machine.

The problem is that even ChromeOS developers write the code and deploying it with Linux (no Mac for OS dev) so they couldn't find the people who need it.

I used one for a week when my laptop's sata cable failed. It's much better then using a phone since x11 worked pretty much out of the box and I could chroot into my old hard drive. But overall Google seems hostile toward sane OSes and I don't expect it to stay that way.

My needs as a developer + the current state of chromebooks tells me no, but the possibility gets closer and closer every time I turn around.

Reasons why not:

1. Even though I utilize the cloud every day, I still like having larger storage for local files.
2. The inability to test (locally) on multiple browsers is unfortunate and not likely to ever happen.
3. I like using VSCode and Atom.
4. I develop for some game specific platforms that only run on Windows.
5. I use a Surface Pro 3 which satisfies all of the above and much more in a very comfortable and portable package.

Still I voted "I can't say" because chromebooks are getting more awesome all the time. I think something along the lines of a chromebook version of Pixel C or the Pixel itself getting to a better price range with some more advancements in Chrome OS and I might change my mind.

Disadvantages is that at least for last year there wasn't a native IDE for ChromeBook, all you got was an online text editor and I believe that you could not do any compiling for code that needed or in my case I could not compile stylus 'cause of the lack of node or external software to do it. So only normal html, css and javascript in my case which sucks. Also I use a lot Photoshop and Illustrator with full capacities which is not supported so that's a big no for me, although I'm actually looking forward to use a Chromebook at least for mortal/muggle use //facebook, netflix, twitter, mail, etc