Where I Program - Independent Developer's Cribs | Hacker News Reader

Where I Program - Independent Developer's Cribs

successfulsoftware.net

52 pointshermitcrab22 comments

http://www.deskography.org/desks/top-rated

Most notably - http://www.deskography.org/media/desks/images/brian_desk_jpg...

I really dig offices with natural lighting in place. It creates a very homey atmosphere which is conducive to working on hard problems.

I like it too, but I think I'm actually much more productive in a cave-like atmosphere...

Same here, but long term it's not good for your mental state. Just like sprinting as hard as you can every day would ruin your knees.

I found the 5 monitor setup is interesting. Some of our ops (!= programmer) people have multiple (>2 monitors) but I have found there's no much point going beyond 3, tops 4 because then you start losing sight of important things happening in them. In my experience it is much better to optimise the real estate on 2 widescreen or 3 regular monitors.

But hey, we're all different.

I'm glad to see everybody seems to have 2+ widescreen monitors. Where I work, an amazing number of people work off a single laptop-sized screen all day. I don't understand how they can do it; it makes me wonder if I'm some kind of programmer-'tard who needs special equipment to function. Good to get some affirmation to the contrary.

The equipment is not so important. I have written some great applications hunched over my 9" eeepc. Generally, I use a 24" monitor and happy hacking keyboard, though; which definitely makes things easier. (It also makes it easier to get distracted by HN, though.)

I spent a while coding on a 15" Lenovo laptop and it works because the resolution is 1920 x 1200. I still like to use multiple monitors but it's not really necessary.

Worst coding environment was probably one of those CRT iMac's running OS 8.

virtual workspaces, no doubt.

I sit in front of my 24" monitor when working in the Flash IDE, Illustrator or PhotoShop; otherwise I prefer working directly on my laptop. I generally just keep an instance of MacVim, a terminal and a browser open; I find myself staying more focused this way -- albeit I miss having a source of reference open next to the editor at times.

Reminds me of the 'desktop pictures' from the LD48 contests. :)

(http://ludumdare.com)

The more ambitious folks record time-lapses of themselves (and their monitors).

Where I work: http://blog.leftnode.com/blog/entry/2

On an Amazon Door Desk I built myself, with whiteboard glued on the top for quick note jotting.

I'm a big fan of the whiteboard top myself although lately I've switched to cheap spiralbound notebooks so that I can look back at my random notes.

I have those for long term notes (notes from a meeting for example), but if a customer calls and I need to jot down a phone number or something really quick, having a whiteboard desktop is great.

Just Setups on Flickr has a decent collection of people's work spaces. http://www.flickr.com/groups/justsetups/pool/

Thanks for the link. It reminds me that I should really wall-mount my LCD.

How can anyone stand those nasty apple keyboards. Apple makes wonderful computers but their keyboards and mice are some of the worst I have ever had the displesure of using.

I concur with the notion of the mice being among the worst I've used, but I love their aluminum keyboards.

I haven't yet switched to multiple monitors. My laptop and I have been through so much coding together, it might just feel like cheating to start using my desktop.

Using a laptop's built-in keyboard & monitor for long stretches of time is unergonomic.

I like my office a lot, with two full walls of windows. I have enough room for two desks, 5 monitors, and a couch/coffee table for sitting and thinking. I use 3 monitors for my main computer, and I find that it's the perfect amount of real estate.

Don't miss http://www.stefandidak.com/office/index.php

Reply on news.ycombinator.com