Live data from Hacker News

My 2020 desk setup

michael.stapelberg.ch

31–40 of 160 posts

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#31

"I found that using only one monitor allows me to focus more on what I’m doing, and I don’t miss anything about a multi-monitor setup." This. I had the same realization maybe 7 or 8 years ago and it is true for me. With multiple monitors it's like moving your hands away from the keyboard all the time and looking for the mouse. Same happens for me while looking for anything across the 2 or 3 monitor setup. It just wea…

Actually, I like having two screens. However, I arrange them in vertical order and one is my primary screen and the other is like additional space I can use when I need it.

For many tasks, one screen is enough/better, but sometimes it makes things a lot easier when you can look at them without having to rearrange your windows.

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#32
post #5

The hardware section makes it sound like he's rebuilding his computer multiple times a year. Do people really find upgrading that often is worth the cost and the bother? What sorts of workloads do people deal with that having top of the line hardware even matters?

I only have a old ThinkPad x230 to discourage me from spending lots of time on computers but that does not work.

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#33
post #12

"I found that using only one monitor allows me to focus more on what I’m doing, and I don’t miss anything about a multi-monitor setup." This. I had the same realization maybe 7 or 8 years ago and it is true for me. With multiple monitors it's like moving your hands away from the keyboard all the time and looking for the mouse. Same happens for me while looking for anything across the 2 or 3 monitor setup. It just wea…

Except you have huge monitor and you lay stuff in multiple side by side windows which makes the whole argument very moot. And when you use laptop you are kind of forced to use single screen because multiple screens is inconvenient at best. When I started development 15" monitors were standard and 17" were a luxury. Setting multiple monitors was a must or you would have to constantly switch between editor, terminal an…

I have three monitors, but I only use one (a 24" one, the second is for when I want to watch some show or movie while doing stuff on the main one, and the third I basically never use). I have my apps always maximized/fullscreen in the main monitor and I alt-tab between them. I never could get into having multiple apps on-screen at the same time, since I can only focus on one.

Writing this comment, though, I realize that a better alt-tab switcher would be a godsend. I keep getting confused with window order sometimes and I'm not sure why, maybe I should write a better switcher.

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#34
Is he me? Same CPU, CPU fan, SSD, monitor, RAM, case, WM, linux distro.. Except I never made the switch to vim from emacs.

In all seriousness, I have great respect for Stapelberg and I thank him for posting this. I love seeing other dev's setups and learned a few things in his post.

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#35

"I found that using only one monitor allows me to focus more on what I’m doing, and I don’t miss anything about a multi-monitor setup." This. I had the same realization maybe 7 or 8 years ago and it is true for me. With multiple monitors it's like moving your hands away from the keyboard all the time and looking for the mouse. Same happens for me while looking for anything across the 2 or 3 monitor setup. It just wea…

Ditto with workspaces. A great idea, in theory, but all windows end up in one place eventually.

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#36
Why Kinesis doesn't produce higher quality build variant of its keyboard? One that doesn't feel like a flimsy/cheap plastic. It seems they are charging premium just for the layout and PCB.

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#37
post #22
post #19

“ For redundancy, I am backing up my computers to 2 separate network storage devices.” Hopefully he understands that this is not a true backup....he’s basically created a more complex RAID 1 running two NAS... For example a flood, a House fire, theft, or a power surge is probably going to lose/fry both then everything is gone. This is a perfect example of thinking you have something backed up but if you store it in t…

Yes, I understand. I have an off-site backup for that reason, in a different part of the city: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2018-01-13-offsite-backu... The redundancy is just for home, because I don’t want to wait for replacement hardware for my setup to work.

That’s definitely an improvement and a cheap solution. I always have to remind people of offsite backups... I had to learn the hard way and I’ve now migrated to Backblaze for one of my backup copies for my cold data .

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#38

"I found that using only one monitor allows me to focus more on what I’m doing, and I don’t miss anything about a multi-monitor setup." This. I had the same realization maybe 7 or 8 years ago and it is true for me. With multiple monitors it's like moving your hands away from the keyboard all the time and looking for the mouse. Same happens for me while looking for anything across the 2 or 3 monitor setup. It just wea…

I have the opposite problem...

I have bad eyes, and use HUGE fonts and can basically only get 1 window per monitor... so I have 3 monitors setup: middle for editor left for browser/docs right for email, slack, irc

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#39
post #36

Why Kinesis doesn't produce higher quality build variant of its keyboard? One that doesn't feel like a flimsy/cheap plastic. It seems they are charging premium just for the layout and PCB.

I got one of their 'freestyle' keyboards years ago.. complete crap - I swear its rubber dome switches :-P

I got an ErgoDox EZ last year, put some nice heavy kaihl box switches in it...now I just gotta find time to learn it (and dvorak/colemak).

Currently using a Vortex Cypher with the split spacebar, I tore down and rebuild - new switches, added leds (south facing mounts so they're useless but I figured I'd try).

and new keycaps.

Re: My 2020 desk setup

#40
How much performance are you able to get out of your router7 setup? If it's unable to saturate the gigabit, do you know where the bottleneck is?
Post reply on HN