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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#171

Post by acdha »

the_af wrote: 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…

Acclimation is a huge factor: if you’re used to writing on a small laptop that will seem normal but few people won’t see a benefit moving to a larger display even if they don’t expect it. That’s one of the few durable research findings over the decades.

Multiple monitors are slightly different: the physical gap means it’s not a seamless switch and not every task benefits.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#172

Post by akersten »

the_af wrote: post #152
dsabanin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my 3 monitor setup. In 20 years of coding, I finally reached peak productivity in my workspace. No switching between windows, ease of throwing a window aside for monitoring, laying out information and tools side to side. It’s incredible once you readjust your habits and learn to use that new space. I compare it to having a large, wide desk when you’re working on something. Who wouldn’t want that? I was one of…

I understand this and I don't want to argue against anyone's preferences. You know what's best for you . I'm just pushing back against these out of touch fads. Most developers worldwide don't have a three-monitor setup. There is no proven correlation between quality software and 4K displays or mechanical keyboards (to name other fads). More importantly, the best devs I've known -- people I admire -- used tiny laptops…

Yeah, I wouldn't say having a mechanical keyboard makes your code any higher quality - that'd be pretty silly.

I think in general the thought is, if you care enough about your craft that you seek out refined tools, that care will be reflected in higher-quality development. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but I'm inclined to believe there's a correlation.

I mean, it would be weird to visit a professional carpenter's house and see Harbor Freight tools, right?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#174

Post by tyho »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #68
tyho wrote: post #30

I have the ultrafine 5k. 27 glorious inches @ 218ppi. Not only does this provide a colossal amount of real estate for crisp text (I run with no scaling, which requires good eyesight), but combined with a macbook pro, provides a near perfect computing solution. One cable provides video, audio, usb hub, webcam and power. Two monitors might be better, but I find leaving the laptop screen open on a stand works well. One…

> I run with no scaling, which requires good eyesight I have been on the fence about upgrading to a large hi-res screen specifically with the aim of maximizing screen real estate, which effectively means little scaling. However I couldn't find much info about running hi-res monitors with little or no scaling. Could you share your experience and/or post a screenshot, just to get an idea of how big UIs end up being?

Judging by the resolution of my screenshot, it appears as though there is still some scaling going on. I can effectively reduce the scaling by zooming out in VSCode, but I'm limited by my eyes, not by the resolution of the monitor. In other words, the text becomes illegible far before it becomes pixel limited.

https://i.imgur.com/PXyOr7R.png

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#175

Post by XCSme »

rob74 wrote: post #118

As far as I'm concerned, if I am going to buy a 4K monitor, I would probably go for a >40 inch one to be able to fit a lot of text on it rather than say a 32-inch Hi-DPI monitor. With subpixel rendering, fonts look good enough for me even on Lo-DPI displays. I'm just afraid that with Hi-DPI becoming more and more common, subpixel rendering will eventually disappear...

Doesn't a 4k monitor fit the same amount of information whether it's 24" or 40", if scaling stays the same?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#176

Post by torb-xyz »

chrismorgan wrote: post #95

Concerning the smoothing, I presume this is macOS’s glyph dilation. pcwalton reverse engineered it in order to replicate it in Pathfinder (so that it can render text exactly like Core Text does), concluding that the glyph dilation is “min(vec2(0.3px), vec2(0.015125, 0.0121) * S) where S is the font size in px” ( https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/918991457532354560 ). Fun times. Trouble is, people then get used to m…

I tried turning off smoothing and frankly the text was uncomfortably thin to read. I guess maybe their font should just be bolder by default so you don't need the glyph dilation to compensate.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#177

Post by kenhwang »

duncanawoods wrote: post #155
kenhwang wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only benefit I've noticed is it's easier to read text and smooth-scroll at the same time. Otherwise it just makes mouse movements and rapid console vomiting look nice. It's really unnecessary for programming in my opinion, use the budget for more pixels.

How much do you hate going back to 60Hz? The hedonic treadmill is getting brutal. Going up to a 4k/34" monitor was nice but it quickly became normal. The main effect was how bad it made 1440p/27" monitors!

I have a 60hz right next to my 144hz and it doesn't bother me at all. It's just text, 99.99% of the time it doesn't move.

But dropping down to 1080p or a smaller monitor is instantly noticeable and very very unpleasant. Everything just looks so fuzzy and hard to read.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#178

Post by foobarian »

All my life I had an obsession with more pixels. As kids we always envied the classmates with the highest resolution graphics cards and monitors. The pinnacle of my life at one point was the unnamed best CRT ever made which got up to 1280x1024, but then LCDs happened.

My new pinnacle is a beautiful 32" IPS panel on a Benq 4k monitor. I don't care for the refresh rate jump from 60 to 120 as much as 30 to 60. But I absolutely insist on large panel area, and lots of pixels to fill it with, so I don't understand how the blog author can live with 27". This is basically programmer nirvana and I don't know what could make it better, maybe some kind of VR setup with similar PPI but I doubt it.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#179

Post by chrisco255 »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #123
compscistd wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like HN as a whole want blogs to come back, and part of that is well written exposition (the technical details) followed by near-outlandish opinions that tend to generate discussion. It's more fun, it leads to more conversation (here we are!), and clarifies our own values. I think three monitors is distracting, but that whole community discussion gave me the opportunity to compare how I use a multi-monitor set…

>I feel like HN as a whole want blogs to come back Blogs never left— they may have withered to near-nothingness after the same exact people who claim to want them abandoned them, but they’re still here. I may be wrong but I believe the people who claim to want blogs abandoned them for sites like Hacker News.

HN is a link aggregator that gives a lot of blogs more exposure than they would otherwise get. I would say something like Twitter (micro-blogging and social networking) has contributed to decline of blogs.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#180

Post by ascar »

JohnBooty wrote: post #113
JohnBooty wrote: post #77

I found this article utterly baffling. The author clearly knows their stuff, having created Fira Code, but my experiences couldn't be more different. I spend most of my days in a text browser, text editor and text terminal, looking at barely moving letters. So I optimize my setup to showing really, really good letters. I certainly appreciate how nice text looks on a high DPI display. But for coding purposes!? I don't…

What's with the downvotes? HN is turning into Slashdot or Reddit, and that's not a good thing. I clearly stated my point. Maybe you disagree. However, the downvote button is not a "disagree" button. It's for posts that actively detract from the discussion. We need some kind of meta-moderation to ensure frivolous downvoters lose their downvote privileges.

I personally agree that the downvote button should be reserved for low quality comments rather than disagreement and that the diverse and high-quality comments are what makes this site and community awesome. Unfortunately neither the FAQ nor the Guidelines state anything about how to use the vote buttons. So how should HN users know when to use them? Is there even consent anymore (or ever has been?) that downvotes should not be used for disagreement? How did I form the opinion that downvotes should be reserved for low quality rather than disagreement? Somehow along the lines of contributing enough to this site to reach enough karma to downvote.

Maybe the guidelines should add a section on how to vote. On the other hand, how can this really be enforced?

It's a sad thing. I also stopped posting opinions that might trigger disagreement from a large majority.

However, the guidlines clearly state:

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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