That part of the write up means that he is still young.
The older you get, the more you appreciate larger monitors, which allow you to continue working without needing glasses and without visual fatigue.
The older you get, the more you appreciate larger monitors, which allow you to continue working without needing glasses and without visual fatigue.
By smaller I mean sub-30" which isn't small by any means but it is smaller than what I see many people use these days. Most people I know have 32" or larger monitors and that is just way too big for me. I currently use a 27" 4K monitor and even that I find a little too big but until I can find a 3:2 or 16:10 ~25" monitor I am not bothered enough to replace it.
Over the years I have realised I am most productive with a tiled window layout. Often side by side or in a 2x2 grid layout. I then make use of virtual desktops.
I find too much "desktop real estate" frustrating and overwhelming. I get "lost" looking for what I want in a mess of windows so much prefer to have what I am working on side by side. Floating windows are only for short lived windows such as print or settings dialogs and not long term items on my desktop.
I prefer to use integer scaling so 4K @ 2x gives me a lovely 1080p "look" which is fine (not perfect on a 27" but very close). Providing I can integer scale I will always buy the best monitor I can and run it scaled to give me this ~1080p UI control size. I just love how crisp text is on a HiDPI screen. Using my wifes 24" 1080p monitor from work is horrible to my eyes now. I guess I have officially been spoilt by high quality screens :)
I started wearing glasses about ten years ago. Probably should have started a year or two earlier tbh.
For me providing the UI controls are the right size I’m quite happy with limited screen space though. I just find it easier to concentrate on a single task which often means just one or two windows without moving things around.
I find “context switching” my brain fatiguing and it slows me down leading to mistakes and I lose “flow state”.
Much like a cluttered desk I find a cluttered screen difficult to work with. Command+tabbing to find the right window is annoying to me now. I prefer to configure my environment so that I always know my browser is on desktop 2. My editor one desktop 1 etc. I can switch to it in a split second without animations or having to search for it.
Obviously everyone is different though. I see people work with a dozen windows on a single desktop but that just doesn’t work for me.
What's the point of 4K if you don't use all the pixels?
Full disclosure my eyesight is terrible so maybe the rest of you can tell a difference between a high res screen that's scaled and a low res unscaled screen at the same apparent resolution.. but I can't