Distrowatch dot com has Mint over ubuntu (Mint first place) by a substantial margin.
Mint escapes mention here, though I understand it is a variant of Ubuntu, it is a rather distinct fork.
I use Mint on an HP laptop to do ruby and Java programming. I use eclipse for an IDE occasionally but mostly prefer vi because it’s extremely fast. I have used various distributions since 1998... Mint is as good as anything IMHO. We use RHEL for server instances and prefer them in production.