It's basically just a web browser with some tweaks for convenient offline Google Docs. You can unlock a full shell and download some decent editors (Caret is one that I've used), if you want to do JS or Python development. Unfortunately the third-party package manager ("chromebrew") does not have a very robust offering, so you're pretty limited in what you're able to do. You can try building binaries yourself but you'll need to build your toolchain as well.

What do you want to do offline? You can install chrome and turn off your internet connection today and find out how well it works for you.

Browse https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/apps?_feature=of... to get a list of apps that are available that work offline.

Or just take your chrome book to china where all Google apps are blocked...