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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#161

This post is from the author of Fira Code, a font with ligatures that is incredibly pleasant to use. Highly recommend to give it a try if you haven't already! Shameless plug: I mentioned this as my favorite font for code editors in my blog post https://dragoshmocrii.com/my-favorite-tools-resources-for-da...

Thanks for the heads-up. Personally, I'm not a huge ligature fan in my code as my eyes tend to go directly to them instead of the code I want to read. It's great that Fira Code comes with a non-ligature version.

You're welcome! I can see how that could be a distraction for some. Personally, I enjoy the aesthetics. And as a bonus, I always get people intrigued when I show someone the code with this font that they never saw before. Nonetheless, in my opinion it's still an awesome monospace font even without the ligatures.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#162

It's frustrating that consumer Hi-DPI display development has completely stalled in the last five years. As mentioned in the article, macOS works best using true 2x integer scaling. Using 2x scaling, a 4k monitor will result in an equivalent workspace to a 1080p display—unusable for productivity and development. A superior option is iMac/LG 5k display results which nets an equivalent workspace of 1440p. The only opti…

I use a Pro Display XDR for programming / design work, I think you forgot this one. It seems like it would fit your needs (with the obviously premium price) as it’s 32”. It’s overkill for most, but still the best display I’ve ever used and I love it. I actually tried an Asus 4K 120hz for much less but the fan noise was a deal breaker even if the screen didn’t break on arrival (it did). Disclosure: Apple employee

I'm impatiently waiting for a slightly less overkill 6K 32" option, it's obviously the best size + resolution for Mac.

My hope is that someone will take the panel and pair it with a ~700nit backlight (vs 1k sustained 1.5k peak for XDR) and price it around $2k. Also interested to see what Apple has in store for the iMac, if the refresh comes with a new and improved display I may just go in that direction.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#163
post #91

I was thinking about a 4k, but i'm not sure I will know how to get everything to run at 2x scale, on both windows and linux. Is this hard to do? Caveats?

It’s the default under both Windows 10 and Gnome 3 for hi-dpi displays. In fact, it’s near impossible to get fractional dpi working across the board on Gnome 3.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#164
post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

I certainly agree that some like them, while others don't. And some grow to like them - I used to scoff... before I tried it for myself. I think as well, it depends on your eyesight, and also your workflows and apps. I use Rider (and previously Visual Studio), and these have a lot of panes/windows - it's really nice to be able to have the code front and centre, with debug output, logs and a command prompt in another…

Oh, I do use an external 1080p monitor because I can't stand my work laptop's 1366x768 display, which usually gets relegated to email.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#165
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal way of organizing 3 monitors: 1. Main screen. For the code editor, intense web browsing, etc. 2. Secondary screen. For debugging visuals (since I work on web stuff, it usually hosts a Chromium window; for a mobile dev, I imagine it would be an emulator/simulator), documentation referencing (with the code editor open on the main screen), etc. 3. Third screen. For all comms-related things: MS Teams/Outlook/…

To clarify, my beef is with Atwood's opinion (and similar opinions) that you must use a three monitor setup, otherwise you're doing something wrong. Of course I understand for many devs this setup works, in which case more power to them! I just dislike being told unless I follow these fads I'm a subpar developer. I don't own a mechanical keyboard or a three monitor setup. I don't own a 4K monitor (I suppose I eventua…

as a general rule I like to have a computer that is sort the average crap that you think a person might have around who does not care that much about computers so then if the stuff I make works on that I know it's going to work on the upscale stuff as well.

Also then when one of my disastrous kids destroys it I don't feel bad.

on edit: fixed typo

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#166
As an early adopter to monitor technology, I have to say that I consistently regret it.

I got one of the first 4k mainstream monitors. I paid $3000 for it. This was back in the day when DisplayPort didn't really "do" 4k, so it was done by pretending it was two monitors internally. This broke EVERYTHING. For years, I struggled with Linux trying to treat two monitors as one big one (and putting new windows right on the border). Welp, they fixed that. But trying to treat two monitors as though it's one was completely impossible. I eventually got it to work by enabling a bunch of random features in the nVidia driver, that when enabled together triggered a bug that broke Xrandr, so everything thought I just had one monitor. (I could not, of course, add a second monitor.) Miraculously, they never fixed that bug. It worked for half a decade at least. (At some point in there I switched to Windows, which of course supported it perfectly because the driver was specifically hacked to detect that model number and do extra stuff.)

Several years later, I wanted to get a monitor that supported more colors than sRGB. Big mistake! While inexpensive, I learned that NOTHING supports color spaces correctly. The Adobe apps do, but that's about it. Online image sharing services go out of their way to MODIFY the color space that you tag an image with, so there is no hope of anything ever showing the right colors unless you manually clip them to sRGB. Things like the Win32 API, CSS, etc. have no way to say what color space a color is encoded in, so there is no way to make the operating system display the right color. ("background-color: #abcdef" just means "set the color on the user's display to #abcdef", which is a completely meaningless thing to do unless your working colorspace is sRGB, and the user's monitor works in sRGB. It worked for years, but was never correct.) The worst thing is, nobody appears to care. ("It just makes colors more vibrant!" they'll tell you) Big mistake. Do not buy unless you never want to see a color as the author intended ever again. (I solved my photography colorspace problem by switching to black and white film. Take that, colors! You can't display them incorrectly if there aren't any!)

The next thing I jumped on is high refresh rate. I waited until 144Hz IPS panels were affordable, and got one. It sure is better than 60Hz, which looks like a slideshow, but there are of course problems. The first is... it is pretty optimistic to think that an IPS panel will actually update at 144Hz. They do not. The result is blur. I run mine at 120Hz with ULMB (which basically strobes the backlight at the display update rate). That looks really good. There are some artifacts caused by the IPS display, and 120Hz is noticeably slow, but moving things sure are clear. You can pan a google map and read the labels as it moves. Try that right now on your 60Hz display, you can't do it!

But because of IPS, at 144Hz without ULMB, you get a smooth mush. At 120Hz with ULMB, you can read moving content (like player names attached to people in an FPS, it is trippy the first time you use it). Having said that, it's bad for anything that doesn't render at 120Hz. Web browsers, games, CAD... great! Videos... AWFUL, just awful. On a 30/24Hz video, frames get strobed 4 or 5 times, and this causes your brain to think "hey, a slide show". (You can record the display with a high speed camera, and it will look completely different from what you see in real life. Darn brain, always messing things up.) Things like pans skip and jerk, as your brain tries to interpret the video stream as a series of ... instead of a smooth blend of ... You can post-process the video to "invent" frames in the middle, so your monitor displays new image data each time it strobes the backlight. I do this with mpv and it looks great. But if you watch video in a browser, you are out of luck.

My TL;DR here is that buying any sort of fancy monitor is just going to make you very unhappy. You will learn everything in the world there is to know about color space math, pixel transition times, using high speed cameras to debug issues (what a time sink), how your brain processes moving images, etc. It won't make you any happier. It won't make you better at programming.

If you play competitive games, get a TN 1080p 240Hz monitor, simply because that's what everyone else uses. Don't use it for anything except the game, because every second that you use it it will make you unhappy. But it's absolutely a joy to play a game on it. (Why 1080p and not 1440p? Guess who bought a 1440p 165Hz monitor. Not anyone that has ever contributed code to the game or played the game at a professional level. But I did! Guess who gets to live with the bugs.)

If you are a programmer, just buy whatever. Every single monitor ever designed will make you unhappy.

If you are a programmer who works with color, get yourself a good therapist. You will be meeting with them on a daily basis, and even then, you'll still be scarred for life. It's all about damage control at this point.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#167
I'd possibly consider upgrading from my 2x Dell 2408WFP setup if modern IPS panels weren't such absolute garbage with respect to backlight bleed compared to the IPS panels made 15 years ago.

Even my old laptops with IPS panels look better than newer ones. I was in the market for a laptop last year and returned 3 different laptops with IPS panel displays from 3 different manufacturers because every single one of them had backlight bleed that was so bad that it was plainly visible even in a well lit room. The last company pushed back trying to claim that that level of backlight bleed was considered "normal" but eventually refunded my purchase once I threatened to do a chargeback through my credit card company.

Do there actually exist any companies anymore that produce decent monitors with minimal backlight bleed?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#168
post #157
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been focused on Apple display products for the past few months as I'm looking to make an upgrade from the Dell P2715Q 4k 27" I use primarily for development. There is a three page thread on using the Apple 32" XDR for software dev on MacRumors. [1] I believe there is a major product gap at Apple right now in the mid-market display. Specifically a replacement for the LED 27" Cinema Display which was announced 10…

I kind of thinking such Display's "Design" could overlap with the new iMac. One reason Apple used to having a "Chin" in the iMac was to distinguish it as a Computer and not a Monitor / Cinema Display. Judging from the leaks, New iMac would not have a Chin at all, and since there is no similar sized Cinema Display in the Line up this doesn't really matter. I just wish they bring back Target Mode, or something similar…

I'm in agreement. Apple might have:

- Proved and debugged on the XDR release at the pro price point.

- Kept working on how it can be cheaper and fit into plans for whatever the ARM-based machine's initial graphics capability will be.

- Designed it to use a similar manufacturing line to the iMac then offer it at a lower price point to support the current mac pro, mac mini and a possible dev kit for the arm mac.

Or I suppose just keep making everyone buy the LG 5k ultrafine that is four years old. :P

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#169
post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

> Some people might like them, [some] won't. By 'like them' are you talking about the full set of tradeoffs, or the raw visuals? Because I'd be very surprised if someone actually disliked how an all-else-equal 4K screen looks, compared to 1080.

Yes, the full set of tradeoffs. My comment is unclear. If someone gave me a 4K monitor for free I'd use it, but not having one is not an impediment for me (or most devs I know).

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#170
post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

I built the majority of the software for my first startup on a tiny under-powered netbook, since I couldn't afford a more expensive laptop. Today I have a very wide monitor for work. Agree that the display size doesn't seem to matter that much, but you do have to learn how to take advantage of features like multiple desktops, etc.
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