I've had a Chromebook for over a year now and my best advice is to skip straight to installing a real Linux distribution (either using crouton or just natively)

I've had a Chromebook for over a year now and my best advice is to skip straight to installing a real Linux distribution (either using crouton or just natively). The reality of ChromeOS apps is much further off than the dream of some totally cloud connected digital worker. Throw Ubuntu on it, get Sublime Text, Atom, etc. and all your development tools, then go to town.