Why do you choose to do it that way? If you really wanted to use an IDE you could just keep it on a github repo or even dropbox, or if it's a local or very fast connection it could even be reasonable to use X11 tunneling. But, if the CLI environment is the most convenient or efficient for whatever's being done then it's a better choice.
Not the person you were asking, but I do it that way because I work with a software package that bundles a ton of proprietary libraries that would be difficult at best to set up on a separate dev machine and because the "IDE" included with it is just a bunch of glue for CLI stuff anyway (with a text editor literally no better than Notepad). SSH+vim is seriously a better option than the tools I'd have to work with otherwise. Bad IDEs do exist.
But that's a niche tool in a niche field with a niche language.
(It's the Cloverleaf interface engine used in healthcare and built on tcl, for the curious).
Though I use a small laptop as a client and sometimes at the machine with monitor and keyboard, most work I do is on a Pi, remotely. I'll be upgrading my Pi to version 2 and splash out the necessary $40.
Now I could fire up the beastly server I have on my desk with 300W power supply, multiple HD's with linux, but as an experiment I moved all the dev over to a Pi. Add a few more Pi machines and I can use one for image processing, another for dev, another for sound/media & I have the core of what I used to do on a desktop for the price of a fast HD.
