I have 2 32" monitors (https://www.samsung.com/us/business/computing/monitors/uhd-a...) rotated 90 degrees (vertical). I became the "Oh, you're the guy with the two tall monitors!" guy at work. I like it because you can see so much code all at once. It is rare that the lines of code are so long that they go off the screen. I typically have the code full screen on the left monitor (well, I usually have a terminal window open at the bottom of the screen), the browser window filling the bottom half of the right monitor, and email/slack/etc. filling the top half of the right monitor. I've found this works best for me.
Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
341–350 of 426 posts
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can absolutely do this in i3 or sway. There aren't default keybindings for doing it, but it is easy to set up your own. I set $mod+equals to 'move workspace to output up' in i3 (or something like that -- I'm not on that machine to check). This works for me since I set up my external display to be above the laptop screen, so it effectively means 'move this workspace to the other output'. You could also specify a s…
That's not quite what's being asked for. I think it's more like super+1 for "move workspace 1 to the current monitor". I haven't quite figured out how to do that in sway, although I'm pretty new with it.
In my scheme that move is just two key combos away, which seems fine to me, especially since it is rarely what I want. You could make it one key combo if you want, too, in a script if not in a single line.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that you are writing in jest, but the very concept that any amount of slouching is tolerable to someone in this profession should be outrageous. We spend decades deforming our backs to sit in chairs. The least we can do is to promote the idea of an international "Insufficiently Ergonomic Office Chair Bonfire Day".
Sit with your butt on the edge of your chair (don't use the back rest at all) ... Your back will be naturally straight and your core muscles will gain endurance. I learned this by using an exercise ball as a chair for six months.
As a musician coder, I always sit that way in chairs.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#344I 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 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.
I very much agree with this - alt-tabbing between browser, terminal and fullscreened Emacs are what I've been doing for years. But very recently I decided to make two significant changes:
1. Adding a second monitor for documentation or visualizing output. When I'm going through longer written works (tutorials on languages, toolkits, etc), it's rotated to portrait mode and I find it more conducive to typing and testing things on the first monitor (with Emacs still fullscreen, but C-x 2 for splitting it in half). Recently I've been playing with OpenSCAD and I've liked having the second monitor in landscape mode; then I edit files in Emacs, and OpenSCAD updates the render as soon as I save the file. Transcribing music from scans displayed on a portrait monitor into MuseScore in fullscreen on a landscape monitor is a third "topic" I find two monitors handy for. Lastly is IT/sysadmin where I have a 160x60 terminal with a tab per server on the landscape monitor, and dashboards or documentation on the second monitor rotated to landscape mode. Control PgUp and PgDown between server consoles, each running screen, where screen zero is colorized log output.
2. The second change might have a a bigger impact than the first: multiple virtual desktops, one for each "topic." For example, my virtual desktops are currently entitled "Main", "IT", "3D Modelling", "Programming", and "Music". Of course I switch between them with a keyboard shortcut. This really seems to help my focus, by putting things "out of reach" so that I can't just Alt-tab to Reddit or HN when I'm bored or stuck.
The key with any tool is to figure out how to make it work for you, not against you. Sounds like you've already made progress on this front, but I thought I'd provide my two cents.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could stretch the "yaw" into a "yawn" which is the typical response when you showcase your elegant and impressive code to family and friends.
Sir, you wound me deeply... yet you speak truth. When I was younger, I'd write code and print it out to share with friends and family with the most disappointing looks returned. Honestly, I have no idea why and how I have persisted in this field for so long given how isolating it can be. Even now, I am writing my own programming language (for board games), and I've run into the sales/marketing problem head-on.
What would a language for board games achieve that a good framework wouldn’t?
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#346Earlier 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?
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.)
> 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.)
Now I want to go write some elisp . . .
But for the moment, I'll let you know that C-x 3 will keep splitting an emacs "frame" (window) in half vertically until you hit something like 10 columns. Just need to write the elisp for the rest of your feature request.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sir, you wound me deeply... yet you speak truth. When I was younger, I'd write code and print it out to share with friends and family with the most disappointing looks returned. Honestly, I have no idea why and how I have persisted in this field for so long given how isolating it can be. Even now, I am writing my own programming language (for board games), and I've run into the sales/marketing problem head-on.
What would a language for board games achieve that a good framework wouldn’t?
I can see a space for something that's largely a DSL with restricted syntax for defining objects, but offers hooks and escapes into code, itself with syntax and abstractions designed to be as graspable as possible, for defining behavior. You could give it to designers and let them focus mostly on building games, not on learning a general-purpose language - think something like Inform 7, but with a different UX target.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#348My contrarian take: I prefer to work from a small laptop, with a non-fullscreen terminal window, and no IDE. This forces me to understand the code I’m working on better - since I can’t see a lot of things at a glance, I got really good at juggling concepts in my working memory. I’ve read that visually challenged people who get really good at super fast text-to-speech almost acquire a super power of quick comprehensio…
> My contrarian take: I prefer to work from a small laptop, with a non-fullscreen terminal window, and no IDE.
Ah, the Joey Hess DE: https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#349This is interesting but the author considers only one degree of freedom, "roll". Equally important are "pitch" and "yaw". "pitch" is necessary to accommodate another kind of rotation, known in HCI as "slouch". "yaw" is important because sometimes your code is so elegant and impressive, that you need people walking by to see it more than you need to see it yourself. You use yaw to rotate your monitor away, toward the…
I know that you are writing in jest, but the very concept that any amount of slouching is tolerable to someone in this profession should be outrageous. We spend decades deforming our backs to sit in chairs. The least we can do is to promote the idea of an international "Insufficiently Ergonomic Office Chair Bonfire Day".
You don't want to burn all that plastic, not without a gas mask at least. But hey, recreational axe throwing by the hour is apparently a thing and so also are places where you literally go and pay to break stuff, I think there's a niche in the intersection of those where angle grinders and shitty chairs both fit. Just want to make sure your PI and liability cover is good.
Re: Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
#350For ergonomic reasons the rotation should change continuously and randomly so the developer doesn’t spend too much time in one position.
Keeps one alert and attentive too! The challenge probably also helps sharpen the mind.