I've used one of their lower end thinkpads (s540) and have gotten 4 years of use out of it doing Java work with vms and running a ton of things without issues on Ubuntu.

I've had next to no problems the whole time, second monitors,webcams,printers,sleeping have all worked straight out of the box.

I've flown upwards of 50 times with it during this period, dropped it, spilt water on it and it has survived it all (almost!). The only reason I'm even looking at replacements is I spilt a full litre of water on the keyboard and a few keys have died forever.

If you're looking for a good development machine I'd recommend the following ThinkPad lines:

* X range: Smallest and lightest, maxes out at 16gb ram (new X1 extreme doesn't but it is $$$$).

* P range: Most power in terms of CPU/Ram/GPU whilst being fairly portable.

* T range: IMO the sweet-spot between X and P. Portable but still with enough grunt, the T480 takes up to 32gb ram.