Three monitors with one central in landscape remains the best layout.
Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
21–30 of 426 posts
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#22This is wrong. Best is 2 smaller monitors one at 90.
Everyone knows this.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#23I've got 3, left is 90, center is 0 and right is -90. It's Tall,Wide,Tall layout. Works a treat.
I have a similar setup with a super ultra wide monitor in the center. Great for focusing on one document while having lots of reference documents, YouTube videos, and stack overflow pages on the other monitor.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#24I've got 3, left is 90, center is 0 and right is -90. It's Tall,Wide,Tall layout. Works a treat.
I used to use the exact opposite. Wide, Tall, Wide.
Left was browser (with tree style tabs to the side), middle was Emacs, and right was everything else (mostly terminals).
Having a tall code editor was nice as it provides more context in a file. And with a maximum of 120 columns per line, width was not an issue.
But having Emacs on a wide monitor allows me to edit two files side to side, which I ended up preferring (one above another is not as nice). I just use two wide monitors now.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tall monitors must be hard on the neck if you frequently need to see the top half of it. The ergonomic recommendation is keeping the monitors at eye level. How do you deal with that?
To expand on my sibling post, since vs code is really the only thing I run on the portrait monitor, I can scroll anything I need to focus on to the center. You’re right it’s tough if there is a blank page and you have to write at the top, but most of the time I’m dealing with a long enough file that I can move what I need to focus on to the center.
I see. I used a laptop with two external monitors at 0° and 90° for a while, but I ended going out of my way to avoid the top half of the 90° because it strained my neck too much. I tried to fill it with a dashboard, but then I was only using a monitor and a half for work. I've been happily living with a modest 0°, 0° since.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#26The ideal rotation is clearly π/8 rad
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#27I just run on a 45" TV at 3840 x 2160. Sure, the response time is slow for gaming, but it works fine for movies and coding. And I have enough space that I can set each window to whatever size and orientation I want.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#28I don't understand why 3:2 and 16:10 have taken over the mobile space but if I want one for my desktop my choices are 1920x1200 or a thirty inch, thousand dollar monstrosity with bad response times.
What's the thousand dollar monstrosity?
The only decent resolution taller monitor I'm aware of is the huawei mateview, which isn't available in the US
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#29I prefer to work with a single large external monitor. If my device is a laptop I keep it in clamshell mode when attached to an external monitor. I find switching applications with keyboard shortcuts and focusing on one thing at a time has improved my productivity. Using two or more monitors made it so easy for me to get distracted. To each their own though.
I agree, I've also moved back to a single monitor. Less distraction, and for me also less neck pain as I keep what I'm focusing on straight in front of me, instead of having a monitor off to one side.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#30I've got 3, left is 90, center is 0 and right is -90. It's Tall,Wide,Tall layout. Works a treat.
Tall monitors must be hard on the neck if you frequently need to see the top half of it. The ergonomic recommendation is keeping the monitors at eye level. How do you deal with that?
What I'd like: an editor with multiple tiled windows side by side, filling up a wide monitor, all showing the same text threaded through it. Line n at the bottom of one puts line n+1 at the top of the window to the right of it. Scrolling in one window scrolls them all.
(Of course you could optionally split it up differently to see multiple files.)