I’m mainly curious about software developers here, or anyone else whose computer is somewhat central to their life, be it professional or hobbyist.

I only have two monitors—one directly in front of me, and another to the right of it, angled toward me. For web development, I keep my editor on the main screen, and anything auxiliary (be that a dev build, a video, StackOverflow, etc.) on the side screen.

I wouldn’t mind a third monitor, and if I had one, I’d definitely use it for log/output, since currently it’s a floating window that I shuffle around however necessary. It could be smaller than the other two, and I might even turn it vertical so I could split the screen between output and a terminal, configuring a AutoHotKey script to focus the terminal.

What about y’all?

[ cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13864053 ]

  • Victor
    4•9 months ago

    Dude you have one hundred and ten inches of monitor real estate? You need to learn how to use workspaces. 😅 That is insane to me.

    I’m also a software developer with docs and IDE and web output (web dev), Slack, Telegram, Spotify, Steam, various terminals for VPN, local dev server, lazygit, various system configs, one browser window for breaks to watch a YouTube video or an episode of some show, other personal browser windows, etc, etc. The list goes on.

    For all this, I have one ☝️ single 27" 1440p OLED gaming monitor (I used to have a 1080p monitor until very recently), with i3 and I make use of its workspaces. I also make heavy use of an efficient window switcher.

    I can’t imagine panning my vision and spinning my neck around constantly at 110+ inches of screen. Isn’t it frustrating?

    Edit: I see you mentioned workspaces so I guess you do what feels best. 😊 Seems like a sweet setup if it doesn’t strain you in any way.

    • @pushECX
      6•9 months ago

      Yeah, like I said, I could absolutely use spaces and I have used spaces heavily in the past. Having three monitors is certainly a nice-to-have and personally I believe having everything up at once is superior to using spaces.

      I sit a good 3.5 feet from my displays, so it’s pretty easy for me to look at my side displays without turning my head. Keep in mind my side displays are vertical. I probably would have to turn my head if they were in a horizontal orientation.

      Anyway, it’s all about what you prefer, can afford, etc. For me, this is my ideal setup.

      • Victor
        1•9 months ago

        Sounds great! Thanks for sharing!