Ask HN: How large is your display, what's preferable for development? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How large is your display, what's preferable for development?

5 pointsalonswartz21 comments

I'm in the search for my next laptop. I've always had a 15" laptop and find it quite productive, but am considering a 14" for portability reasons. I don't watch movies or play games, I code, all day...

I've always wanted to be part of the three monitor club, but due to moving around I've never had the opportunity.

Bottom line, what monitor size would you recommend for productive coding?

For bonus points, if you have multiple monitors or a really large one, do you really find it more productive? or distracting?

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As for the monitors themselves, it's much much less about the size and more about the pixels. My primary monitor is a 1920x1200 and I love it. I have three other 'smaller' (in terms of pixels) and I honestly think the fourth one is more of a distraction than a help. I do frequently use the other three all at the same time (code on one, database tools on another, and browser for running/debugging the web pages I'm working on on the third).

My iMac display is an insane 2560x1440 (or something close to it) and I still am badly in need of a second monitor. But I feel that with that many pixels, just one additional monitor would be optimal. Particularly if it were that same size (not that I'm going to shell out the $1000 for that any time soon when the 1920x1080 monitors are so cheap now).

I've been going somewhat retro on the monitors lately. I used to have a billion virtual desktops, two physical monitors, etc. But I now find I get more done with a single, relatively small monitor, in Linux console mode (!), running some reasonable but not huge resolution. I don't go all the way to 80x25, but 132x50 works nicely. The fact that it causes about a second pause when I ctrl+alt+f7 back to the X console (due to reinitializing the videomode) is also a nice deterrent from ADDish alt+tabbing.

The main time I find two monitors productive is if I'm doing a lot of iterations on something where I need to keep looking at the output, like webdev stuff. Then it's nice to have the webpage on one monitor, and the code on the other, instead of arranging two half-screens or alt+tabbing a lot.

I've had many monitor configurations over the years, including a three monitor setup that included a 30" cinima display. To be honest, it was more distracting than it was worth. I'd go to the coffee shop with just my laptop and come back with tons of stuff done.

A single laptop screen (or single medium-sized desktop monitor) means you only have one place to focus. With two monitors, I always ended up having "distractions" like twitter, email, RSS, etc. there to pull me away.

I love my current 15" macbook pro but I also loved my 13" macbook pro when travelling. Depending on how much you travel, I'd go with either of those and no monitor and get into immersive environments instead of nailing yourself to a desk.

I agree with the distractions part. If I need to focus, email is closed as is twitter. Growl doesn't help either.

More monitors are more productive. Larger screens (only if good resolution, etc.) are also more productive. All monitors should typically be within peripheral vision, otherwise notifications coming up might not be noticed.

Consider a real keyboard and mouse. Consider synergy: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

If you are looking at a macbook/macbook pro - also consider glossy vs. matte screen (glare can be an issue).

Finally, if you're really trying to be productive, consider other visual and audible distractions, flow interruptions, taking breaks during work to increase mental stamina, length of time spent at work.

I have a single 30" monitor and use Spaces on the mac. It makes me much much more productive than smaller monitors.

The thing I like most about the 30" monitor is the HEIGHT -- I can see more lines of code. The width doesn't usually get used until I do side-by-side diffs.

The thing about one monitor is that I focus on one thing, and other things don't usually distract me from the sides. The notable exception is the red apple mail badge (small red numbers counting new mail). I sometimes have to turn down/off the mail check frequency.

I organize things with Spaces: 1) mail+organizer+chat 2) calendar 3) browser 4-7) main dev windows (terminal/xemacs) 8) itunes

For me, monitor size is dependent on real estate needs. If I'm doing work that requires a lot of high-res visuals I can make use of two monitors; but if I'm working with plain text, an 80x25 character display is usually fine. I do not generally use monitor space to view things I am not working on - at most, I'll have one chat window going. In the past I felt an improvement from more monitors, but now I suspect that they are mostly band-aids for a lack of concentration.

I generally recommend to people to get smaller sized laptops because the lower bulk will help to absorb bumps and drops.

sorry to be pedantic, but the lower bulk won't absorb bumps and drops. It will however reduce the impulse, because the lower mass results in less force

impulse = F * dT F = m * a

Currently working with two monitors and but I definitely need a third one. At any point in time, I have at least four different browsers open, two or three adobe apps, a few text editors, communications windows, terminals and so on.

I feel I am more productive, because it's all about viewing space. If I have to alt-tab, or exposé between windows back and forth, that's a time waste.

If you're going for maximum productivity, I don't think you can really achieve it on a laptop, unless you're in and out of the office on a daily basis. I'd say if you're looking to get the most work done, use multiple monitors.

If I have to alt-tab, or exposé between windows back and forth, that's a time waste.

Only if your hands aren't already on the keyboard.

Heyoo

I use a 17" MacBook Pro for coding with Divvy to manage the screen real estate. I keep a browser, TextMate and Terminal open. Occasionally I will have a PDF open as well if I am learning something from an eBook.

I also have a 30" Cinema Display that I use, but more often than not the portability of the laptop and the fact that I need to rearrange my windows when connecting the 30" display often prevents me from switching over to it.

I have found though that the 30" display works well for pair programming if you enlarge the text in Terminal and TextMate or if you lower the screen resolution to 1920x1200.

I currently have two 22.6" monitors and a 15" laptop. I read a study once that found that dual monitors increased productivity over a single large monitor. Also, I believe that this effect increased with monitor size up to about 24", then declined, especially after 30".

EDIT: Here was the article I was referring to: http://lifehacker.com/367391/do-larger-monitors-make-you-mor...

I use a Dell XPSM1530. Dell's build quality has been, well, variable to say the least of late but the XPSM1530 although now discontinued is an awesome laptop. The best part though is the 16" 1920x1200 display. I do a lot of proposal and report writing and it allows me to have two documents side by side.

It's also good for coding, gives me plenty of space in PyDev, Immunity Debugger, plenty of terminals and everything else I need on the one screen and it's still portable too!

I find a massive difference between mac and windows, I believe that's mostly thanks to exposé.

On Windows I have 3 monitors (of varying sizes unfortunately) and think I couldn't have enough of them (one for a full-screened version of each app I use). On a Mac I seem more comfortable with just 1.

But I am coding .Net apps on the Win box (with a seperate VS solution for server & client), whereas the Mac is more web development. Maybe that makes a difference too.

I have a 15" (1680x1050) laptop with a 24" (1920x1200) second monitor. KVM switched to my Mac as well.

This setup is great. I have background tasks on the laptop screen (email, system monitoring, directories) with my main dev work and auxiliaries on the big screen.

Interesting sort-of-related article: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/08/the-large-display-p...

By coincidence, I happen to be using a 55" touch screen right now (an LG HDTV 1920x1080 with a PQ Labs touch overlay). It's actually pretty usable but I do feel neck strain a the end of the day.

Right now, I'm on a 19". I feel like having another monitor will be more productive. I'm not sure, though, If having 2 screens with different sizes/resolutions is usable, any thoughts?

Have you made use of any of the virtual desktop solutions out there? I've found Spaces on Mac to be useful when I'm on a single 15" screen.

Been using them for years on Linux, can't live without them. I use three 1) email + timelog 2) journal + coding 3) reference + browser. With the help of the virtual desktops and keybindings, any app or desktop I need access to is a key combo away.

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