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Comment by sixothree | Hacker News Reader

Is this guy really a developer? I can't imagine using a single 15" monitor to accomplish anything at a productive pace.

That's funny, I can't imagine being tethered to a single spot and accomplishing anything worthwhile!

Snark aside, I love big monitors as much as the next guy, but I've seen very productive developers that never even maximized their code window, let alone used multiple screens.

Getting in the flow is way more important than having a nice setup.

Portability is important to me too. Our business continuity plan accounts for disaster scenarios. My development machine is a laptop (17") with 24" monitor and another machine with 24" monitor all using one keyboard.

Maybe it's the type of work that I'm doing is very technical but there's no way I could actually do this much work on a small screen.

I work all day on a MacBook Air 13. I spend 70% of my time in a terminal, so screen size doesn't matter much to me.

No true Scotsman would do such a thing.

I used 2+ monitors from 2000 to 2010ish. After switching to only laptops I gave up secondary displays and never went back. The only times I miss it is when I want to have docs open. I don't know why you'd need it otherwise.

Same. I made the switch when KDE started supporting the Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Keys to spin my desktop around on a six-sided cube. So much handier to flip between sides. I really miss that in Windows.

That's the thing. I always have multiple docs open - tasks lists, TDS, specifications (I deal with a lot of specifications). As of this typing I have 22 open windows among 3 monitors. Virtual machines, specs, time clock, web browsers, visual studio, skype, SSMS, iTunes, etc.

Call me crazy but I cannot imagine having to do all of that on one machine and still be productive.

Indeed. It's a good thing there were no developers between 1970 and 2000, and all programs spontaneously arranged themselves via xkcd butterflies until monitors arrived that allowed for development.

15" 4:3 monitors were standard before year 2000. You have to go back to probably the early 90s before standard monitors had less real estate than a 15" widescreen. Of course resolutions and panel quality have increased since then, which mitigates the problem of working off a laptop monitor. Personally I find im far more productive on a 24" monitor than a 14" laptop screen, but its not impossible.

I grew up developing on small monitors. It was painful.

It's actually a 13" monitor... I guess it helps you focus.

Yeah, I cannot believe he said that. The more real state the better. Why not spread out if you can afford it?

Look at your computer again and pay special note to the Command + Tab keys.

Sounds less productive than already having documentation on the screen when needed.

Single tasking is the new multitasking.

I'm not a developer, I'm a scientist (astronomer as a matter of fact).

I live on a single 13" screen, the MacBook Air I'm typing on right now. I used to have lots of screen space, driving dual monitors on my linux box at work. I replaced them with a fern.

For some people, less is more =)

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