Going to purchase a laptop that's dedicated to web surfing and development. Do any of you own a Surface Pro and program with that? If so, are there any pros/cons you've found whilst using that? Would a laptop just be better in the long run?
Hmmm... well I can't quite answer your question. But I programmed on my Samsung Smart Ativ Tablet 500t. It has an atom I used it for a C# programming class. So I was doing simple stuff. One thing I found myself using a lot though was a Bluetooth mouse. The stylus is useful. But it is still difficult to beat the speed and accuracy of a mouse in my opinion. I would imagine the i5 in the surface pro would be able to handle some development. My brother has one but he doesn't program. Sorry I couldn't completely answer your question!
Personally, I feel that a proper laptop (a Macbook Air in my case) is far far superior for coding than any tablet solution (however hybrids like the Yoga are an exception).
Both the Type and Touch covers are inferior to a real keyboard if you plan to do anything more than bang out fifty lines or so. Considering that the Surface is not significantly superior in any parameter (battery life, cost, computing power, portability) to an Ultrabook, I cannot justify using one for coding.