Live data from Hacker News

4K is for programmers

tiamat.tsotech.com

91–100 of 342 posts

Re: 4K is for programmers

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I do a lot on the terminal, not everything is faster there. Jumping between symbols in your IDE is not going to happen faster on the command line because it's a spatial operation. You've located the symbol visually, clicking it to jump to definition is far faster than keyboard-navigating to it, or even typing it. Merging is better with a dedicated merge tool than a command line merge. I have to resolve conflict…

Although I don't have any problem stitching side-by-side commits in a terminal, or keeping multiple text buffers akimbo in general (its what the terminal is ideal for), I can't argue with most of your points because you're probably 100% correct in the context of your environment and it's limited modes of input (mouse-centric). And you have my sympathies. Being forced to use the mouse is a drag, and I would argue, a c…

As I said, it has more to do with your working memory than with speed or ease of navigation.

If you are viewing more code at once (which a larger screen allows you to do) then you can be more productive at certain tasks. I find that large architectural changes, performance profiling, and complex debugging are particular scenarios that lend themselves well to a large screen. This is the point I was making to which you replied with your preference for the command line on a small screen.

I am fully aware of how to manipulate image assets on the command line. Most computer vision and computer graphics tools I have written are executed via the command line so they can be pushed into my build phase. But I deal regularly with many formats from many tools, and not all of them can be dealt with easily on the command line.

The command line is not immediately better than everything — most visual oriented tools use keyboard shortcuts. You may not realise this, but committing those shortcuts to muscle memory makes using graphical applications just as fast, if not faster, than many tasks on the command line.

Do you also do all your performance profiling on the command line? Because that is a situation where visual data is very helpful, and a visual interface is in general more efficient and faster to navigate than the same on a command line.

As I said elsewhere, I do not use a mouse at all, so I do not have a mouse-centric workflow. I use the trackpad centimetres from my keyboard for gestures. This only requires slightly more physical motion than pressing a key, and ties itself just as strongly to muscle memory. I also use a graphics tablet for design, painting, and 3D modelling.

And to repeat, my initial point relating to large screens still stands. If you can see more code at once (whether on the command line or not, who cares?) then you do not need to commit as much to your working memory, and you can more productively make large scale changes that effect a lot of dependent code.

Same goes for performance profiling and debugging. The more info you can have up at once, the more you can dedicate your mind to reasoning about the problems at hand and the less you switch back-and-forth between views.

Re: 4K is for programmers

#92
post #82

The article lists the "ideal size" for monitors at 50 inches, and the one for TVs at 100+ inches! While I'm sure it's great to have such massive screen real estate (I wanna get a 4K in 2014 too), I can't but help think this is the programmer equivalent of consumers buying needlessly large TVs. I work on a 24" desktop monitor and a 14" laptop one. How is 50" the "ideal size"? Even 39"? At what point does the law of di…

Id say in terms of productivity it adds almost nothing because the biggest things holding a programmers productivity back have nothing todo with display size. Better get rid of interruptions, procrastination, bad tools etc.

That being said programmer happiness is elemental and a 42inch 4K screen would add to that for me :)

Re: 4K is for programmers

#93

This seems like flaunting your budget more than improving your environment. Maybe I just need to get my eyes checked again, but for some reason my code just doesn't perform any better or write itself any faster with more screen real estate and I'm as productive on my laptop as I am on my big screen. 4K is not for programmers, code is for programmers.

I've always felt the same. A huge monitor has never felt any better or more productive than my Macbook Air -- just bigger. I mean, I just never need to be looking at more than one window at once. And when I need to interact with multiple windows (editor, browser, e-mail, docs, whatever), then I need to shift the focus to each of them anyways to reload the browser, change the code, highlight a new email, etc. -- so I…

I like to have the following windows visible at the same time :

* Code editor * Terminal with the logs of my app * Web browser where I see my app running

It's really one task, and focus is on doing this one thing (coding). But having these windows visible at the same time really saves my short time memory.

Re: 4K is for programmers

#94
My problem is that I have really bad eyesight and I don't want to program all day on a monitor with pixel density like that. I have a laptop which has a high pixel density, 1080p at 13 inches and it is just not ideal. I am zoomed in 150% to 200% on websites routinely.

Re: 4K is for programmers

#95
post #92
post #82

The article lists the "ideal size" for monitors at 50 inches, and the one for TVs at 100+ inches! While I'm sure it's great to have such massive screen real estate (I wanna get a 4K in 2014 too), I can't but help think this is the programmer equivalent of consumers buying needlessly large TVs. I work on a 24" desktop monitor and a 14" laptop one. How is 50" the "ideal size"? Even 39"? At what point does the law of di…

Id say in terms of productivity it adds almost nothing because the biggest things holding a programmers productivity back have nothing todo with display size. Better get rid of interruptions, procrastination, bad tools etc. That being said programmer happiness is elemental and a 42inch 4K screen would add to that for me :)

[deleted]

Re: 4K is for programmers

#96
post #82

The article lists the "ideal size" for monitors at 50 inches, and the one for TVs at 100+ inches! While I'm sure it's great to have such massive screen real estate (I wanna get a 4K in 2014 too), I can't but help think this is the programmer equivalent of consumers buying needlessly large TVs. I work on a 24" desktop monitor and a 14" laptop one. How is 50" the "ideal size"? Even 39"? At what point does the law of di…

I've had three 30" Cinema Display's side by side for a while and it was awesome; except for my neck hurting like hell after a while when looking at the outer half of the outer screens :)

That convinced me that, unless you're going to make a circular desk with a keyboard that moves along with your chair, the perfect setup is a 30" display with two 20"-ers next to it in portrait mode.

Re: 4K is for programmers

#97
post #82

The article lists the "ideal size" for monitors at 50 inches, and the one for TVs at 100+ inches! While I'm sure it's great to have such massive screen real estate (I wanna get a 4K in 2014 too), I can't but help think this is the programmer equivalent of consumers buying needlessly large TVs. I work on a 24" desktop monitor and a 14" laptop one. How is 50" the "ideal size"? Even 39"? At what point does the law of di…

I think the "ideal size" depends on the size of the monitor you are currently using. I was happy with 29" initially... now I can't wait to try something larger.

I am not sure where this process ends, but 50" sounds very nice indeed. :)

Re: 4K is for programmers

#98
post #82

The article lists the "ideal size" for monitors at 50 inches, and the one for TVs at 100+ inches! While I'm sure it's great to have such massive screen real estate (I wanna get a 4K in 2014 too), I can't but help think this is the programmer equivalent of consumers buying needlessly large TVs. I work on a 24" desktop monitor and a 14" laptop one. How is 50" the "ideal size"? Even 39"? At what point does the law of di…

I don't really understand how a TV can be needlessly large. Also, I don't understand why people still buy TVs in 2014.

When I replaced my TV about 4-5 years ago, I bought a 500€ beamer and a 100€ retractable canvas. Sure, that beamer only has 1024x768, but today you'll certainly be able to buy something significantly better in a similar price range.

With my living room PC connected to the beamer, my "screen" is 1.7 meters wide, I can watch movies, television, play games, have internet, linux (rsync!, ssh!) and all of that significantly cheaper than any "decent" television set.

Why do people (given they have the space) still buy televisions?

Re: 4K is for programmers

#99
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't argue about a 39" monitor, but having more screen estate boosts productivity for me to the extend that I'm sure that I could use 3 27" over my current 2 24". Avoiding alt+tab means I get my information quicker when I need it from another window, and I get back to the previous context faster. Sometimes I need both but does not have space and is tabbing back and forth.

Sure, but if one were to plot (a) the number of alt-tabs you do in a day, versus (b) screen size in inches...don't you think at some point the delta benefits would start leveling off?

Sure, diminishing returns kick in but monitors are cheap and programmers are expensive. It's the same reason that 16+GB of ram and SSD's are worth it. Not because most people need it but the cost is low enough that the productivity gains need to be minuscule to be worth it.

aka Assuming monitors last ~3 years and cost below 2,000$ it takes a tiny difference to be worth it because your not just comparing productivity delta's but also cost delta's. In other words a 2,000$ monitor that improves productivity by 1/20th of 1% than a 1,000$ monitor is clearly worth it over 3 years even if the difference is simply eye strain. 3x (salary + benefits + overhead) * .0005 > 1000$.

PS: Another way to look at it is spending an extra 1-2k per year on salary over industry standard rarely tempts programmers but an extra 1-2k per year on hardware might.

Re: 4K is for programmers

#100
They say that having a 120hz monitor greatly improves the desktop experience (it's not just for games) so wouldn't 30hz be a real downgrade if you're used to 60hz?
Post reply on HN