Well, development seems more like a VPS job, since you aren't going to be utilizing the CPU too much.
I think high-load web servers (which will be hitting the disk often) or video game servers (especially world-simulations like Minecraft or Factorio) that will benefit from dedicated servers the most.
But give it a shot. I know that the higher-cost VPS are more expensive than those dedicated boxes. I'm also surprised at how cheap dedicated has gotten recently.