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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#701

Post by eddiecalzone »

mulmen wrote: post #687
Godel_unicode wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm on MacOS. I basically never maximize anything. I just resize the floating windows and put them where they make sense at the time. The dream would be doing this with the keyboard using something like i3. I have been tinkering with that on weekends but M-F I focus on paying work.

Check out Moom. You can save window layouts and replay, save window positions and apply them to any app, arbitrarily move, maximize to a range with a customizable margin, etc etc. https://manytricks.com/moom/

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#702

Post by staycoolboy »

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…

I started coding in Windows Visual Studio again recently after decades of absence, and the enormous length of their variables, function names, and function parameter lists, has me >120 columns again. All my non windows code is 80 (or 100 in very rare cases).

So now I need a wider monitor. I was on an NEC 6FG until 2011 and then went to a small dell flat panel 1280x1024. I suppose it is time to join the 2020's.

I have multiple VNC and RemoteDesktops up at any moment, so maybe I'll really splurge and go for one of those fancy curved ones.

This article is written in a style i can really appreciate. That's a lot of research.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#703

Post by sholladay »

Having read the article, I'm still not able to fully grasp why the old techniques for improving text legibility can't be "scaled" with screen resolution. We had imprecise pixels before and we still do, in the sense that they are very finite. I totally get why smoothing and other tricks aren't as necessary as they used to be, but I don't get why they have to be detrimental on Retina displays. At what resolution does this reversal happen and why?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#704

Post by Legogris »

mumblemumble wrote: post #635
mulmen wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The 4K monitor at my office is a fair bit smaller than that, and I haven't used it since the COVID-19 epidemic sent me packing home. Since then I've just been using my laptop's built-in screen. To be honest, I think I may stick to it. At first, the huge monitor was fun, and initial change to having less screen real estate was definitely a drag. But, now that I'm accustomed to it again, I'm finding that "I can fit les…

I think this really depends on the work you do, also. Pure development or content creation and I'm good with just a laptop. For research, with team communication, concurrent terminal sessions, debugging, management - I really do want at least 3 screens.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#705

Post by Legogris »

mulmen wrote: post #666
keenmaster wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

32” 4K is perfection, right in the sweet spot of size.

Agreed. My work monitor is a 32 or 34" ultrawide. It works well but I would really like more vertical real estate. I'm definitely shopping for 32-34" 4k displays right now.

3840x2880 34" would be so nice.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#706

Post by tomc1985 »

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…

> 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plugging in a 1080p monitor. Also good luck having anyone's random spare monitor be 4k.

I have been running two 1440p displays on a 4K retina MBP and the experience has been impressively seamless. Both with Catalina (the latest) and High Sierra

The biggest problem is with Apple port splitters; they are crap and sometimes monitors wake from sleep with a garbled picture

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#707

Post by xigency »

godelski wrote: post #677
orestis wrote: post #373

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.

Throttle your internet connection or add simulated latency too!

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#708

Post by the_af »

lukashrb wrote: post #385
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…

>The best developers I've known wrote code with tiny laptops with poor 1366x768 displays. I'm sorry to say this but that is not a real argument.

It's not meant as an argument, but as an illustration: people who I respect more than the author of TFA, and whose skill and accomplishments I've witnessed first hand, weren't eager to upgrade from tiny screens. It's not that they would've refused a better screen if given one, it's just that they didn't ask for it and it wasn't a pressing issue. Indeed, for them it was not "time to upgrade the monitor".

It taught me the valuable lesson that creating software, to them, was mostly about thinking, not about the gadgets you use to write it down.

Like another commenter said, it seems gadgets work as proxies for talent for some developers -- "you should use a mechanical keyboard and a 5K three-monitor setup, like real hackers do" -- because actual talent is harder to gain and demonstrate. A sort of cargo culting by accumulating tech gadgets.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#709

Post by 29athrowaway »

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…

> Good luck ever having a decent experience plugging in a 1080p monitor.

A 4k monitor is now $300 (new). Used are even cheaper.

> Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming. I use i3 and it adds way more productivity to my workflow

I use Gnome 3.36 and many HiDPI issues I was having before are now gone, without any extra configuration.

> My argument in favor of 1080p is that I find text to just be... completely readable.

It is readable but fonts are pixelated, unlike 4k.

My only problem is that macOS has some artificial limitations when it comes to using non-Apple monitors. Like a lower refresh rate. My solution? Use Linux.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#710

Post by michaelmrose »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #684
thomaslord wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You know, I was in complete agreement with the article and I was considering a 1440p monitor or something until I saw your comment and reflected on it. The most productive periods/jobs I can remember were on i3wm with a Goodwill 900p/19" monitor and a 20" iMac 10 years old at the time. But it's because I had access to good tools then like Neovim/Atom respectively. My work now requires an RDP Notepad.exe session so th…

Is there no way to sync files with the remote environment so that you don't have to actually use notepad.exe
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