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Except you have huge monitor and you lay stuff in multiple side by side windows which makes the whole argument very moot. And when you use laptop you are kind o

Except you have huge monitor and you lay stuff in multiple side by side windows which makes the whole argument very moot. And when you use laptop you are kind of forced to use single screen because multiple screens is inconvenient at best. When I started development 15" monitors were standard and 17" were a luxury. Setting multiple monitors was a must or you would have to constantly switch between editor, terminal and documentation. If you look at the setup that's exactly what is happening. On a single screen there is browser with documentation (presumably), and there is four (!) IDE/editor/terminal windows. It's not about how many monitors you have but rather what you are doing with them. You can put Netflix as one of the windows and still get distracted on a single monitor setup or you can have bad sight like me and require two 27" monitors side by side so that I can magnify fonts and have documentation, IDE and terminal at the same time with no strain.

secure 6y ago
> If you look at the setup that's exactly what is happening. On a single screen there is browser with documentation (presumably), and there is four (!) IDE/editor/terminal windows. Just to clarify: there are two i3 containers side by side (each using 50%). The left one’s active window is a browser, the right one’s active window is Emacs, in which I have two buffers side by side at the top, and compilation mode and magit status side by side at the bottom.
illuminated 6y ago
"Except you have huge monitor and you lay stuff in multiple side by side windows which makes the whole argument very moot." Not my case. I don't lay my stuff around. My apps are in the menu, running ones on dock (Mac or Linux) and when I do need to have few windows open at the same time (second one either being terminal or mobile emulator or whatever) I arrange them to fit the same screen. My smallest screen is 15" on my Thinkpad, 17" on MBP and an external is Dell 23". Had no issues so far with my workflow.
arvinsim 6y ago
For me, it's not about having more monitors. It simply about having enough real state to be productive. It doesn't matter if I use 2 27" 1440 monitors or a 32" inch 4K monitor. Personally, a single 27" 1440 monitor is the bare minimum I am comfortable with in a desktop.
StavrosK 6y ago
I have three monitors, but I only use one (a 24" one, the second is for when I want to watch some show or movie while doing stuff on the main one, and the third I basically never use). I have my apps always maximized/fullscreen in the main monitor and I alt-tab between them. I never could get into having multiple apps on-screen at the same time, since I can only focus on one. Writing this comment, though, I realize that a better alt-tab switcher would be a godsend. I keep getting confused with window order sometimes and I'm not sure why, maybe I should write a better switcher.
- zeven7 6y ago
  A better alt+tab switcher would be great! Why isn't that a thing? I'm imagining something where you could use alt+f1, alt+f2, alt+f3, etc. to switch to specific windows rather than just rotating between everything.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Yes, exactly! Or just a saner way of sorting the tab order would be nice. I'll look and see if there's one for Linux, there must be something...
  - layer8 6y ago
    On Windows, you can effectively use Win+1-9 for that by pinning the applications to the taskbar. I use that all the time.
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    Long time ago I made a python script to manage my 2-monitor i3 setup. The idea was to be able to quickly select things to be made visible on both monitors. The two monitors are named primary and secondary. To select something to be visible on primary you would press the combination (for example alt+f1) and the selected desktop would be placed on primary. Whatever was on primary would be pushed to secondary. To select both primary and secondary you would first press what you want on secondary and then what you want on primary. The idea is that people typically have what I call "scenes". Scene is particular arrangement of windows on both monitors. This means that you can quickly learn your "scenes" and get them to be visible very quickly, in a fraction of a second, without having to hard-code the scene in your config file.
raverbashing 6y ago
The main issue for me is finding in which monitor the focus/mouse is So yes, while in some situations (like debugging a complicated app, or for some "standby" information) multiple monitors are a must, for general use it ends up being too distracting.

secure 6y ago

> If you look at the setup that's exactly what is happening. On a single screen there is browser with documentation (presumably), and there is four (!) IDE/editor/terminal windows. Just to clarify: there are two i3 containers side by side (each using 50%). The left one’s active window is a browser, the right one’s active window is Emacs, in which I have two buffers side by side at the top, and compilation mode and magit status side by side at the bottom.

illuminated 6y ago

"Except you have huge monitor and you lay stuff in multiple side by side windows which makes the whole argument very moot." Not my case. I don't lay my stuff around. My apps are in the menu, running ones on dock (Mac or Linux) and when I do need to have few windows open at the same time (second one either being terminal or mobile emulator or whatever) I arrange them to fit the same screen. My smallest screen is 15" on my Thinkpad, 17" on MBP and an external is Dell 23". Had no issues so far with my workflow.

arvinsim 6y ago

For me, it's not about having more monitors. It simply about having enough real state to be productive. It doesn't matter if I use 2 27" 1440 monitors or a 32" inch 4K monitor. Personally, a single 27" 1440 monitor is the bare minimum I am comfortable with in a desktop.

StavrosK 6y ago

I have three monitors, but I only use one (a 24" one, the second is for when I want to watch some show or movie while doing stuff on the main one, and the third I basically never use). I have my apps always maximized/fullscreen in the main monitor and I alt-tab between them. I never could get into having multiple apps on-screen at the same time, since I can only focus on one. Writing this comment, though, I realize that a better alt-tab switcher would be a godsend. I keep getting confused with window order sometimes and I'm not sure why, maybe I should write a better switcher.

zeven7 6y ago
A better alt+tab switcher would be great! Why isn't that a thing? I'm imagining something where you could use alt+f1, alt+f2, alt+f3, etc. to switch to specific windows rather than just rotating between everything.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Yes, exactly! Or just a saner way of sorting the tab order would be nice. I'll look and see if there's one for Linux, there must be something...
- layer8 6y ago
  On Windows, you can effectively use Win+1-9 for that by pinning the applications to the taskbar. I use that all the time.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Long time ago I made a python script to manage my 2-monitor i3 setup. The idea was to be able to quickly select things to be made visible on both monitors. The two monitors are named primary and secondary. To select something to be visible on primary you would press the combination (for example alt+f1) and the selected desktop would be placed on primary. Whatever was on primary would be pushed to secondary. To select both primary and secondary you would first press what you want on secondary and then what you want on primary. The idea is that people typically have what I call "scenes". Scene is particular arrangement of windows on both monitors. This means that you can quickly learn your "scenes" and get them to be visible very quickly, in a fraction of a second, without having to hard-code the scene in your config file.

raverbashing 6y ago

The main issue for me is finding in which monitor the focus/mouse is So yes, while in some situations (like debugging a complicated app, or for some "standby" information) multiple monitors are a must, for general use it ends up being too distracting.