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Comment by dkersten | Hacker News Reader

I used to use the “cube” but with six or seven sides (so whatever a hexagonal or septagonal cylinder is called), with the faces being transparent so you can see the windows floating in the background.

Nowadays I use an open laptop with two external monitors, with the laptop out to the left, my largest monitor in landscape in the center and a portrait monitor to the right: - — |

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> so whatever a hexagonal or septagonal cylinder is called

In case you're interested (probably not!), the word you're looking for is prism e.g. hexagonal prism or heptagonal prism.

I have settled on exactly the same setup! It's pretty great. My right-hand monitor is a terminal 24/7. My center monitor is code—I used to think I'd want vertical for code, and it is nice sometimes, but at my current job I benefit from having several files open side-by-side more than I benefit from seeing more of one file. It's a 4k monitor and I have it fractionally scaled so that I can read comfortably, but I can also fit up to four files side-by-side on the screen at once. It is very useful. And then the laptop screen is for Slack, docs, AWS dashboard, whatever is useful at the time.

I use the right hand monitor for slack and documentation. Sometimes a terminal, very occasionally code that I’m reading (not writing).

I also used to think is want a portrait monitor for code but it turns out that the Jack of horizontal resolution actually bothers me for code. Maybe with a higher resolution monitor it would be better, but for now, I prefer to use a large but landscape monitor for code.

I will never understand people who have a landscape monitor as their main. The only thing landscape is good for is videos, everything else is portrait (including many videos).

The only semi-reasonable excuse I've heard is that people use a landscape screen as three or four portrait screens (so four windows side by side on it), but then just get a portrait screen and split it four ways also.

You can pry my | - from my dead fingers.

My monitor is primarily a gaming monitor. As such it's stand does not allow for rotation to portrait.

Does it have holes for a VESA mount on the back?

I use a 43" 4K TV as a monitor. It completely fills my visual field, and I cannot turn it sideways.

I hope this comes across as a semi-reasonable excuse.

I use landscape monitors because it effectively allows me to have two portrait arrangements side by side on one screen.

Also a vertical monitor is terrible on my neck. Humans necks are designed to look down but not up above eye level for extended periods.

I learned this after extended discussions with a neurosurgeon on what the most common neck and brain injuries are, and what I could do or not do to best avoid seeing her.

That said, we are all different. Use what you prefer!

You're right, I have the screen much lower than eye level (because I basically lie back on my chair), but this is generally good advice.

This idea sounds nice. How big is your monitor?

I just tried turning my monitor vertical. My initial impression is this left me with very little space with which to read text; and felt like it'd hurt my neck if I were to look up to the top of the monitor. I did get to see more content vertically. (A bigger monitor would alleviate the former but exasperate the latter).

It's 24", I found that anything larger than that was a bit too large.

I use a 24" 1440p screen. On a 1080p monitor (or 4k at 200% scaling) there isn't a lot of width left if you turn it, and if you go for more pixels than 2560x1440 (at 100% scaling) the text gets too small on a 24".

My main monitor is 31.5” and my portrait monitor is 27”. My main is raised maybe 10” above my desk and set up so its center is approx. my eye height, while the portrait monitor is on the desk (so it’s bottom is lower, but it’s too is about the same as the other monitor)

My main monitor is 1440p, I think the other is only 1080p and the lack of horizontal resolution is one reason I don’t use it for code, but I find it works well for slack and documentation. I occasionally use it for code too (eg unified diffs) but mainly I use the main monitor for code. Maybe one day I will replace it with a higher resolution one and then I might use it for code more.

Unless you have a super high DPI display (which in this day and age you probably do) rotating the screen breaks sub-pixel antialiasing, which makes text look blurrier.

Is that a given? I don't think there's an inherent reason why the font rendered couldn't anti-alias vertically instead of horizontally.

Only if something is broken in your configuration. You should be able to set the subpixel layout. Sure, the subpixels will be divided vertically instead of horizontally, but it should still help.

I don’t need an excuse. I just like it.

I find my laptop slides around too much when I'm trying to type with it on its side.

Also some ports get blocked. You have to drill a hole in your desk to use those ports. Very inconvenient.

There's a limit to how far up and down it's comfortable to look for long periods of time. That limit, in most desk setups, is pretty much the height of the top of a landscape monitor. Once you reach that you might as well just have a wider monitor to be able to see multiple threads of work at once.

With large 16:9 monitors in particular this is a problem. 16:10, 5:4, 4:3, 3:2, etc would all work better in portrait displays.

That’s actually a good point. My main monitor sits on top of a stand so it’s raised above my desk, set up that the center is roughly eye height. The portrait monitor is on the desk and its top is about the same height as the main monitor. The laptop is also on the desk so is much lower, but I use it mainly for calendar, jira board and things like that.

That sounds like a pretty good setup.

One thing I heard, which feels true but I don't actually have a way to verify tbh: you should aim to have the _top_ of your monitor at eye level, to avoid temptation to look up often. I've been told that that is bad for your neck.

I tend to use two split windows in my code editor and I’ve found this generally more pleasant than a separate window on another monitor (although part of that is that many editors don’t have great multi window support)

What do you like about split windows? Since I can only pay attention to one thing at a time, I've always found alt-tab superior.

I agree with you about landscape oriented displays, especially with 16:9 laptops. It's like looking at the world through a gun port. At home, I have two 24"displays, one portrait and one landscape which covers all bases.

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