bah, not really if you use editors like emacs or vim. I'd suggest also using screen to maintain a dev session going. screen lets you start shells and detach from a session without closing any of them (useful for long running jobs too). In the end my remote environment doesn't differ much from my local environment.
I do most of my development on my server at home from my laptop (either at home or at coffee shops), but if I hadn't already invested in a beefy box I would definitely be using http://pair.io instead.
