I also see comments about programming on them, that'd be painful. For everything else (that matters at school) though it's 10/10.

Isn't programming on a chromebook just a guacamole session away?

I could see giving kids access to a unix system via guacamole or a similar shell-in-browser solution and letting them run riot.

https://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/

For younger programming classes I try to lean towards using Scratch which is in browser. For the older classes I'll usually set up a terminal server and let them login to it.

To help smooth the process of having them program on their own, I send home a writeup with how to install everything on a home computer for different operating systems, how to ask questions on StackOverflow and give an email address I have manned by other students that like responsibility.

I've worked off of them a few times, they're basically useless without internet is the only major drawback - if you connect to a RDP session the battery will last forever.

> I also see comments about programming on them, that'd be painful.

There are plenty of programming-in-a-browser tools available that are far from painful, plus now that they support Android apps, there's plenty of Android-based programming tools that are non-painful.

Not really. It's quite easy with Crouton installed.

Crouton is not ChromeOS.

I didn't say it was. It's an option you can explore if you need to extend the functionality of the Chromebook.