even if you live in a terminal all day 1280 x 720 is just too small to be practical.
edit - I too once basked in the warm rays of a 320x200 CRT, it's OK at the time if that's all you've ever experienced, but it's hard to go back to that from 4k.
edit - I too once basked in the warm rays of a 320x200 CRT, it's OK at the time if that's all you've ever experienced, but it's hard to go back to that from 4k.
Or on programmable calculators (TI, HP, etc.), with just 128x64 or so screen.
Or on Amiga (704|640)x(200|256|400|512).
Or VGA PC 640x480. VGA was for the first time truly enough for an IDE. SVGA 800x600 soon followed. And 1152x864, etc.
So one should definitely be able to manage with 1280x720.
I think we can adapt to whatever is available. I guess one could even manage software development with just a single line (320x8, 40x1 characters) display. It'd certainly be far from optimal, but you could do it.
Of course now I enjoy 4K resolution and multiple monitors...
Or even a dumb terminal (TTY) that prints to physical paper.
Works fine for me. Even smaller makes me work on production stuff for weeks at a time. It's a matter of taste.
It is perfectly practical.
Hell, right now I have three terminals open. One that I'm using to make changes to a file, another that I'm using to just hit the up arrow and enter to scp the file to a remote server after every change, and another to tail the log file in case there's any errors popping up. Could I do it with one window? Sure. Can I use screen to make it seem like I have three? Of course. But why would I bother when I've got tons of real estate?