I am Linux kernel network and proprietary distributions developer and have actually read the code.

Reading stuff in /proc is a standard mechanism and where appropriate, all the tools are doing the same including 'ss' that you mentioned (which is btw very poorly designed)

Also there are several implementations of the net tools, the one from busybox probably the most famous alternative one and implementations don't hesitate changing how, when and what is being presented.

What is true though is that Linux kernel APIs are sometimes messy and tools like e.g. pyroute2 are struggling with working around limitations and confusions. There is also a big mess with the whole netfilter package as the only "API" is the iptables command-line tool itself.

Linux is arguably the biggest and most important project on Earth and should respect all views, races and opinions. If you would like to implement a more efficient and streamlined network interface (which I very much beg for and may eventually find time to do) - then I'm all in with you. I have some ideas of how to make the interface programmable by extending JIT rules engine and making possible to implement the most demanding network logic in kernel directly (e.g. protocols like mptcp and algorithms like Google Congestion Control for WebRTC).

I switched to using cloud9 more than a year ago and I live on chromebooks for almost a year and my experience was generally positive. I use c9 to develop a C app, some python code, and some web service code. It generally works better than vim on a remote machine, with much faster response as all the syncing is done in background and is absolutely non-distracting. I also have some SSH c9 workspaces running on GCE to do testing as c9 uses very restrictive docker environment that just does not suite my needs. c9 was pretty buggy a year ago, up to the point that I periodically lost my work due to sync malfunction. I actively reported bugs and they fixed them. Nowadays it is much more stable than it was but is still noticeably buggier than desktop IDEs even with that limited functionality that it provides. Another concern is service uptime. I had problems accessing my environment about 10 times during last year for about 30 minutes each, but that's not that much. As for the chromebook itself - it is absolutely great, is somewhat buggier than ubuntu but it's okay, the most annoying thing is chrome os keyboard shortcuts that always stand in your way, but you can get used to it. Nevertheless I can say that it is absolutely doable and you really get all the benefits you think about, and these benefits absolutely worth it. But what I like the most is "disposable computing" concept - you can throw away your laptop, take another one, just log in and continue working from the point you stopped. You just get the job done, that simple. I use "VIM" mode all the time and c9 has a consistent vim mode support, although much of the rarely-used functionality is still missing. Verdict: I love it, cloud IDE is the future and I can recommend everyone to do a switch.