I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

My general opinion on this whole article is “cool, glad you found a solution you like.”

I try really hard not to sell my workflow to others like this. Two people can be incredibly different in their preferences.

Just because multiple monitors made you less productive doesn’t mean it has the same effect on someone else.

I’m sure the people they mention who have troubles focusing because of having Twitter on another monitor exist, but there are many others I know who have wide or multi-monitor setups who use them extremely effectively to pull in multiple sources of input to write great code.

One monitor is for code and one is for docs, communication, misc programs I don’t need to focus on.

I don’t find this a distraction as my main monitor is code pretty much all the time. A quick glance I find less distracting than swapping desktops.

What I don't understand is two monitors with the divide right in front of your face. Lots of people are set up that way (at my work anyway).

A primary monitor (32" 4K of late) as the main, centered display, plus whatever you have (open laptop) off to the left, for keeping communications software onscreen, works for me.

I think it comes down to one's workflow. If doing a lot of cross-referencing (e.g. GUI x code, paper x notes, codebase1 x codebase2), a large monitor/ more-than-one monitor situation could benefit.

Having tried large monitors before, I resonate with these points made by the author:

- "Sure, the screen was wide enough to display multiple windows side-by-side, but it was so wide that the edges felt uncomfortably distant." (My personal work-around is to use a pure black background. I suspect white is worth trying as well.)

- "[A widescreen monitor] was far too wide to maximize my windows, so I found myself spending too much time fiddling with windows. “What should I put on the left today?” “What’s important enough to be in the middle now?”"

While on the topic, I can't help but add my suspicion that people who have "better memory" might be roughly equally comfortable with switching windows on a single monitor and having them simultaneously displayed on multiple monitors.

> As a developer, I write code on a daily basis. So I often read docs. But I rarely need the docs visible at the same time I’m writing code. I read the relevant doc, then code.

I am the opposite of this, especially using manpages or the api docs and when I jump around to new things.

If I'm being as charitable as I possibly can with the author's arguments I could admit that maybe coding with a secondary monitor is a preference that I could quickly unlearn

But that is not the only work I do. Multiple monitors allow me to have several plots in front of me; or a dashboard and the raw data it aggregates; or two versions of a powepoint deck of slides; or...

I think this discussion is kinda empty. If single monitor was easily a best-tool most people would not go through the cost and trouble to set up a multi monitor desk a second time.

I also find it weird that someone would "preach" about it strongly. It's a subject that virtually every person has experience in - and therefore access to the testimony of eveyone they know on the matter, because they are also familiar with it

> But I rarely need the docs visible at the same time I’m writing code. I read the relevant doc, then code.

Interesting. This is by far my most frequent annoyance when using a single monitor as I keep needing to go back and forth to see whether what I have found fits my needs well.

As a side note your chances of developing costochondritis are much higher if you’re using multi display setup, especially with only two screens. Got that, moved to 1x32”, never looked back. Not sure if it will ever heal fully at this point (4 years in). So I’d add using multiple displays is not healthy as well (you need to rotate a lot, even if we’re talking inches its still rotation, your muscles will pay the price sooner or later).

Virtual workspaces are good but not exactly new. The first one I saw was olvwm on Sun sparcstation. CDE had 4 workspaces in its little task bar too.

I like multiple monitors for complicated debugging tasks. Its not unusual for me to have VSCode, Android Studio and Segger going at the same time. I have been tempted to hook up a 3rd monitor but ran out of desk space.

In graphics programming, having a monitor for reference material, a monitor for the graphics debugger and a monitor for the game under test isn't terrible. That's probably my primary use of multi monitor - debugging.

Sure. For me, a 1440p 49" super ultrawide practically replaced 3 x 1440p 27" monitors even though it really only has the same amount of pixels as 2 of those monitors.

Hard disagree on everything else in that article.

I stack my two monitors on top of each other, much better for code because my eyes just have to move down but don’t need to re-focus to a new column, and I’m looking more forward and up to reduce slouching.

Well, you can use multiple monitors and still focus on a single task. You have more real estate and stop spending time switching between your browser, IDE and terminal.

I use one big monitor. Like the rest of my little bubble. Those bevels from multiple monitors get boring.

  Humans can only focus on one thing at a time. So why are we spending money to display multiple things simultaneously?

Would the author use that logic to argue that no monitor should have more than a single pixel? While there might be a point where adding more monitors becomes pointless, it's not two monitors. Two monitors still cover a small area, compared to a human's full field of view.

I'm all for single monitor but i find it very useful to use Odyssey G9.