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Ask HN: Widescreen or fullscreen monitors for programming?

5 pointscodedivine9 comments

Which do you prefer for programming? Widescreens or fullscreens? I prefer a 5:4 monitor to wider resolutions like 16:10 or 19:10. I have found the excess width to be distracting.

What is your typical tool of choice? I typically use Vim which does not usually have the sidebars common in IDEs such as Eclipse. Does the UI of the tool may affect your choice of monitors?

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I prefer widescreen with multiple windows tiled horizontally.

edit: Usually terminal+MacVim windows. Or sometimes, xcode windows, with left-most one being the project window.

The nice thing about the widescreen is that it fits multiple emacs windows side-by-side, so that you can view substantial portions of more than one buffer at once (or two substantial portions of the same buffer).

That said, the first rule of screen space is to have more of it. Whether or not it's optimally distributed is secondary. In web development there is always a use for more windows. (Docs, server logs, logins under multiple identities, multiple browsers pointing to the same thing for design debugging, IRC...)

I have Dual Dell 2408WFP's... lets me see four apps at once with plenty of real estate.

Screen 1: Browser (showing whatever I'm working on) and gVim (with my code).

Screen 2: Browser (with whatever references/interweb material I'm looking up), multiple terminals (tail logs or for messing with git/whatever).

I use AwesomeWM (tiling window manager), so I don't have to bother arranging all this myself. Other tags (workspaces if you are from the gnome/kde world) have things like Pidgin and last.fm open.

I prefer one widescreen next to one widescreen turned vertical. this way I can view plenty of code on the vertical monitor, and yet enjoy the benefits that the widescreen monitor brings.

For virtually any activity I would do while sitting down at a computer/workstation, I think wide screens have a much more natural fit to a person's eyesight. I think they're just more comfortable to look at.

On the other hand, I can definitely see a reason for vertically oriented screens in eBook readers and some hand-helds. I can't think of a time when I would rather have a more square screen.

I prefer widescreen, with windows tiled horizontally as well on my mac. I use terminal with visor (google blacktree) which is sweet, and then a bunch of different spaces - coding w/ textmate for ROR dev.

Why isn't this a poll question?

Widescreen 22" + Macbook screen. Textmate for some things, but Xcode and its (many) requisite windows for iPhone stuffs.

I use a Dell S2209W 22" wide panel monitor. Its way comfortable than using smaller monitors and i don't think i can go back to using smaller ones.

Widescreen, but I spend almost as much time in Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash as I do in Visual Studio and Notepad++.

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