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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#461

Post by bitexploder »

thomaslord wrote: post #239
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…

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

I have a 49" curved monitor. It is effectively two 27" 1440p monitors stapled together (5120x1440). It is the best monitor I have ever had. 1440p has a very decent [higher than typical] pixel density but is not "retina". Fonts look pretty smooth, but you can still see pixels if you try really hard. Overall, I do think high density screens look amazing, but the software has not quite caught up to them. The benefits are on the softer side, and if I could just have magical mega-high-DPI displays with no side effects, sure why not? As it stands, 49" curved monitor is pretty fine. It fits four windows side by side at reasonable resolutions.

Primary apps go in the middle, such as code editor, etc.. Tertiary windows, such as documentation go on the outer edges. Still quite usable, but a little out of the way for extended reading.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#462

Post by runawaybottle »

josho wrote: post #321
runawaybottle wrote: post #64

Any suggestions that are not over 500 dollars?

I have an LG ultrafine 5k, and a cheap BenQ 4k. The difference is night and day. I hate the BenQ* and will dump it as soon a I can. My suggestion is to hold off until you can save up and buy one of the suggested displays when it's in your budget. * The BenQ has a matte finish which effectively blurs everything, e.g. it's like it reduces the resolution by 10-20%. The colors are not accurate to my macbook display, desp…

1200 feels like a lot to spend on a monitor.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#463

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#464

Post by bonestamp2 »

mulmen wrote: post #392
auggierose wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are on macOS, all is good. Never had a problem with any of my 4 monitors (3x4K, 1x5K). I set the scaling to a size I like, and the text is super crisp. I don't see how any programmer can NOT like that.

How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first. In my experience MacOS multi-monitor support is effectively non-existent. Recently I picked up a 49” ultra-ultra wide monitor (basically 2x27” panels). It is one monitor but MacOS can’t drive it. They just don’t detect th…

> every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first

Maybe we can get to the bottom of this. What is your use case?

I ask because as long as I plug them into the same ports it remembers how I arranged them previously (2018 macbook pro 15"). I haven't had to arrange them in over a year... even remembered when updating to latest operating system. Occasionally, I even plug in my LCD TV as a third external monitor and it remembers where that one should go in the arrangement too.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#465

Post by auggierose »

mulmen wrote: post #392
auggierose wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are on macOS, all is good. Never had a problem with any of my 4 monitors (3x4K, 1x5K). I set the scaling to a size I like, and the text is super crisp. I don't see how any programmer can NOT like that.

How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first. In my experience MacOS multi-monitor support is effectively non-existent. Recently I picked up a 49” ultra-ultra wide monitor (basically 2x27” panels). It is one monitor but MacOS can’t drive it. They just don’t detect th…

That used to happen occasionally to me as well in earlier macOS versions. Didn't have to do any rearranging since Mojave, I think, definitely not on Catalina.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#466

Post by fuball63 »

I still use an old boxy crt as my second monitor. It's at a low resolution, even for it, but it's primarily for slack and video meetings. I code and webbrowse using OSX full screen swipe mechanism on the main laptop screen.

I often reflect on how blurry and oddly colored the crt is in comparison, and that how back in the day I never noticed or cared.

It works fine for slack, and I prefer bigger text for chat anyway. Because it is still working, I don't see a reason to put it in a landfill or be "recycled".

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#467

Post by shoes_for_thee »

fouric wrote: post #146
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 think three monitors is distracting Could you elaborate on this? Specifically, do you feel that having three/multiple monitors is necessarily distracting (no matter what you do with them) or just encourages distraction? My experience is the latter, and that if I am disciplined and only put windows from one task at a time on all three, then I have no more temptation to be distracted than I usually have at my inter…

My experience is that my attention span sucks enough that there's not a functional difference between encouraging distraction and being necessarily distracting.

I do basically all my work on my laptop without an external display. I use two displays for some specific tasks where I need to look at two things at once.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#468

Post by Scarblac »

fouric wrote: post #146
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 think three monitors is distracting Could you elaborate on this? Specifically, do you feel that having three/multiple monitors is necessarily distracting (no matter what you do with them) or just encourages distraction? My experience is the latter, and that if I am disciplined and only put windows from one task at a time on all three, then I have no more temptation to be distracted than I usually have at my inter…

So it needs more discipline to use them, and I need to apply discipline for so many things already. I'm much better off with just the one screen.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#469

Post by yreg »

tonsky wrote: post #292
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…

this is interesting, thank you! And font-weight: 300 has been an old personal nemesis. That explained at least part of it! Do you know if font dilation is on by default?

Hello there, perhaps it's a joke, but dark mode makes the article unreadable.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#470

Post by bitexploder »

jciochon wrote: post #314
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, my main monitor is a 43" 4k display, and it works perfectly fine on AwesomeWM - but I' don't use any scaling, the 4k is purely for more screen real estate - literally like having 4 perfectly aligned borderless 24" monitors. I can fit 10 full A4 pages of text simultaneously.

43" seems rather large--how far away do you sit? If it were as close as a more "normal" sized monitor (~2-3 feet), wouldn't you be craning your neck all day trying to see different parts of the screen?

Nah. I have a 49" curved 1440p monitor. Things you look at less often go to the sides. You can fit 4 reasonable sized windows side by side. Code editor holds over 100 columns at a comfortable font size for me 40 year old eyes. It's the best monitor setup I have ever had. You can spend less and get the exact same real estate with two 27" 1440p monitors. Either way, it is a fine amount of real estate and not at all cumbersome for all day use in my case.
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