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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#671
post #386

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.

I recently upgraded to a 43” 4k monitor and use it the way you describe. I’m not sure I am happy with it. The real estate is nice but it might be too much. UI elements end up very far away. I rarely need all that space. I either need a bigger (deeper) desk to sit back farther or just a smaller monitor physically with the same resolution.

If you're on Windows, consider the fancyzones power toy. Break up your screens into an arbitrary set of maximizable zones. Highly recommend if the normal 4 corners isn't enough for you.

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modul...

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#672
post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode You lost me right here on line 1. If there are apps on MacOS that can't handle high dpi mode, I haven't run into them as a developer (or doing photo editing, video editing, plus whatever other hobbies I do). Also, I don't have any trouble with plugging my highDPI MacBook into a crappy 1080p d…

> Also, I don't have any trouble with plugging my highDPI MacBook into a crappy 1080p display at work. Low DPI monitors are pretty much unusable since MacOS dropped subpixel rendering - with fonts being a blurry mess. You can only really use MacOS with high DPI monitors now for all day working. It’s a huge problem for everyone I know who wants to plug their MacBook into a normal DPI display. Not that the subpixel/hin…

It's pretty straight forward re-enabling sub pixel rendering.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I gave you more vertical pixels? Would that be okay? 1280x1440 maybe? Just a few more.

Nope, bad aspect ratio. Let me know if you find a 1920x1536, though. (1600x1280 would also be nice, and a 2560x2048 would be a 4K monitor that's actually useful, although thomaslord's objections still apply.) Edit: actually, wouldn't 1440x1280 (aspect ratio 1.125, which is even less than my usual 1.25) be a better use of such a LCD panel, rather than a obviously-useless 1280x1440 (with a aspect ratio less than one)?

Maybe. I did use 1280x1024 for a year or two back in the day. Mostly I have found vertical pixels to be more prized for reading, software dev, etc.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#674

I've found my journey through tooling evolution to be fascinating (to me at least). When I was new and coding was slow, my worries were about so many other things (like how the language even worked) than even what text editor I used, let alone the monitor. As I became experienced, a lot of newbie problems went away and the next topmost problems emerged, leading to be obsessing over text editor, shortcuts, and even a…

how do you build your projects using VSCode if you don’t mind me asking?

Visual studio code's launch.json, combined with the extension for your language of choice, is generally a pretty good experience.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cum…

Which model is your 49"?

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-49-curv...

It’s quite a piece of hardware. It lets me plug a USB hub into it. It supports USB-C for its display adapter. So it’s the dream: one USB-C cable to charge the laptop, drive the display, and provide a USB hub for keyboard, mouse, etc.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode You lost me right here on line 1. If there are apps on MacOS that can't handle high dpi mode, I haven't run into them as a developer (or doing photo editing, video editing, plus whatever other hobbies I do). Also, I don't have any trouble with plugging my highDPI MacBook into a crappy 1080p d…

I have been using a 4k monitor and 2 1080p monitors on linux for a while now. The current state of things is that hidpi works correctly on everything I have run including proprietary apps. I'm also surprised when my wine programs scale properly as well. What does not work perfect is mixing hidpi and lowdpi screens. On wayland with wayland compatible apps it works fine but on X11 or with xwayland apps like electron it…

I can confirm this anecdata. Single and dual 27" 4k is fine, but mixing with a 27" 1440p is messy (tried with GNOME and KDE on Manjaro during early Corona home office).

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#677

Do all that, of course. But when you’re writing applications for other people, go buy a shitty middle of the pack laptop, resolution 1280x768, with the windows start bar and menu bars eating like 150pixels of that, and try to use your software there.

While we're on it, make sure this is a low end laptop in terms of components too. Make sure your application is usable. No one needs a chat client that eats several gigs of RAM and a significant portion of your CPU.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

Hey, do you mind sharing more info. on how to get the monitor? I'm looking to invest in a curved one since it's an experience I've never had. And are there retina models out there, or is it not worth it, in your view?

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-49-curv...

I like Retina DPI, but this is good enough. It’s not very curved, but it has some curvature. I don’t think it’s worth it. 1440p is good enough for me.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#680
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…

I don’t mean to pick on you personally, but what a stupid argument that is.

How is more pixels and more legible text not strictly better than lower resolution monitors?

It’s like preferring 10 DPI mice to the modern 1000+ DPI ones, saying that PCIe 4x was better than 8x or actively disliking a modern DSL connection compared to a 56k dialup.

Yours is just an idiotic stance to feel superior than everybody else.

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