When I code, horizontal space is never at a premium. It's always vertical space I'm short on.
Pulling out my T42p retro laptop, with its 4:3 screen, always gives me the warm fuzzies. Love that aspect ratio.
This is incredibly useful to a whole load of office employees, who want to refer to two word docs, or 1 word doc and 1 PDF, etc. This is where widescreens shine (and 16:10 is even better than 16:9) and why I think they've excelled well in the workplace.
A 16:10 monitor rotated 90 degrees (what I have right now) is OK, but it wastes space at the top and bottom that the 4:3 monitor would be using to zoom the document more.
A horizontal 16:10 monitor with two PDF's, as you mention, is too small for me (at least with my current 24 inch monitors). Caring for the eyes is essential when you're looking at on-screen PDFs all the day. I would probably like that layout with a 30" monitor though... although maximizing windows in two monitors is still more comfortable than tiling in one big monitor.
If you're using Windows, here's a neat feature I went years without knowing: Windows key + left arrow arranges the window to occupy the left half of your monitor, and similarly with right arrow.
The last few places I've been have been strong supporters of dual monitors, so I might be in a bit of a thought bubble on that, but also because monitors have gotten dirt cheap so why not. You can get dual IPS for the price of a fancy office chair.
I’m seriously considering buying an LG 34UM95 monitor¹ for precisely this reason. It’s so wide (34" screen, 21:9 aspect ratio, 3440x1440 resolution) that I could sensibly divide the screen into 3-4 full-height columns with different source files open in each for development work.
Currently I have a decent Dell 30" as my main screen, but at 2560x1600 resolution I wind up using it with a 2x2 split for coding, which roughly halves the number of lines I can see at once in a long file.
I’m a little sceptical about trying a 1920x1920 screen at that physical size for similar work, simply because I’d worry about what prolonged use would do to my neck with that much vertical movement being needed all the time.
Given proper resources, I'd consider getting one. Just wanted to share my funny anecdote that it's so large, I rolled back and forth to take advantage of it all :)
However, from my typical centered vantage point, windows near the corners appeared skewed.
Presumably this is the advantage of the new curved screen version¹, though so far it’s considerably more expensive and it looks like at least here in the UK no-one has it available for immediate purchase.
tl;dr: Vertical: Mostly eye movement. Horizontal: Lots of neck movement.
They call these 16:9 displays widescreen. I call them shallowscreen: they are just don't have th evertical space for work. Why are my work tools made with screen form factors that are only suitable for watching movies?
And yes, I love my T43, which has a lovely display and keyboard even though it is almost 10 years old. Alas, it is just underpowered today.
Last time I completely rebuilt my home setup I got monitors that can be rotated into portrait. I've not used the facility nearly as much as I thought I would, but then again I've not done much development since so that might be why.
Having one portrait and one landscape seems to be idea for web development: portrait for coding and landscape for output (as that is what the user's will likely have) & the things that don't fit properly in 1080 pixels wide.
You don't want to large a monitor in portrait for coding though: you'll be looking down a lot (or up+down if you sit with your head centred) which might be quite bad for posture. Beyond a certain size you are probably better off with a large monitor and some UI hack to artificially split it into columns.
It certainly is. My browser is never even that wide now, and the only thing I ever run full screen is games.
4:3 is about right for a laptop since you can't make them too "tall" or they'll become difficult to handle, much like books.
It seems to me that a 16:9 monitor is exactly what you need -- rotated vertically. Get one that pivots!
This sounds really weird to me. I absolutely relish the ability to have an editor and terminal side by side without either of them feeling "squeezed up". If you're using an IDE you can also get a lot more space for actual code even with those annoying side areas that IDEs tend to have.