Can't activate certain features

Also worth noting, I am using the Storefront theme by WooThemes and am developing locally at the moment.

I am developing locally at the moment

When you work locally, external services like WordPress.com can’t communicate with your WordPress installation.

For this reason, we automatically enable Jetpack’s Development mode for you:
https://jetpack.me/support/development-mode/

It allows you to use all the features that do not require a WordPess.com connection. Don’t worry though, as soon as your site is live you’ll see a Connection prompt at the top of the Jetpack menu in your dashboard, allowing you to connect your site to WordPress.com and thus get access to all the Jetpack features.

Wicked, thanks a lot. Hey, while I have your ear, is there an easy way to edit pages with an external editor? If not, is there no feature for syntax highlighting the HTML on WordPress? Seems weird that everyone building HTML for WordPress is doing it without syntax highlighting. (Thanks again!)

is there an easy way to edit pages with an external editor?

There are a few external editors out there. Here are a few examples:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/xml-rpc/

Once your site is live and if you activate Jetpack and its JSON API module, you could use StackEdit, or if you like writing in Markdown:
https://stackedit.io/

is there no feature for syntax highlighting the HTML on WordPress?

I’d suggest installing a syntax highlighting plugin. Here are a few examples:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/syntaxhighlighter/
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/crayon-syntax-highlighter/
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/pastacode/

You can find more here:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/search.php?type=term&q=syntax+highlighter

Neither of the three plugins work for me. All the ‘external’ editors are paid options.

I need a way to use a bonafide IDE to edit posts/pages, like I edit my theme/plugins.

It seems really absurd that the hundreds of thousands/millions of people using WordPress are all developing HTML with no syntax highlighting. HTML is already error-prone as is, we don’t need to make it exponentially worse.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has brought this up. Lol. Developing HTML inside a browser without syntax highlighting. This is the craziest thing I have heard all day.

It seems really absurd that the hundreds of thousands/millions of people using WordPress are all developing HTML with no syntax highlighting.

I’m not sure I really understand. Would you like to use the WordPress editor to actually write code? The plugins I mentioned above only help and add syntax highlighting to the frontend of your site, in the posts displayed for your readers to see. Here is an example on my own site. I wrote that code in a code editor on my machine, and then pasted it in the WordPress editor and used this plugin to add syntax highlighting to the frontend.

If you’d like to add syntax highlighting to the editor, you can search for such plugins in the repository. Here is one of the results that come up:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/html-editor-syntax-highlighter/

You can search for more here:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/search.php?q=Syntax+Highlighter+editor