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He says "I rarely need the docs visible at the same time I’m writing code. I read the relevant doc, then code. My workflow is modal."

This is certainly not a common opinion. Most people want to glance back and forth quickly. And most people hate modal dialogs.

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I'm guilty of printing spec sheets and physically holding them up along side my code. I haven't touched embedded systems in a while so I don't anymore, but I agree some things are best read side-by-side.

Student, so talking about my home setup.

Whenever I'm doing any electronics work I open datasheets on one monitor and the SPICE tool / layout software / etc on the main monitor. It's especially useful when making component footprints for PCB layouts, swapping back & forth was bad enough that I used to just print out the needed pages.

I might be wrong, but they're not referring to modal dialogs, but rather saying that they work in several modes such as "reading docs", "writing code", etc.

I use modal dialogs as an example of an app forcing the user to work in a modal way. Thunderbird used to throw up a modal dialog whenever I lost wifi on my laptop. Outlook still won't let me send an email when I'm browsing the address book. Most people find modal behaviour an annoying restriction.

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