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Jeff himself has had three 19" monitors at home: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/multiple-monitors-and-productivity.html http://www.codinghorror.com/bl

Jeff himself has had three 19" monitors at home: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/multiple-monitors-and-productivity.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/multiple-monitors-a... I don't think he disagrees having a similar arrangement is superior over the alternative of a large monitor. It is not a "Joel vs Jeff" thing as it is made out to be, in the question. Most of our standard apps, standard websites are designed to work at resolutions much smaller than what 30" monitor would display. It makes a lot more sense to have multiple monitors where you don't have to wrestle using Grid software to move things around. - It feels a lot more natural to have browser open in one monitor and the IDE/Text editor in other.

rbarooah 16y ago
I find the idea of optimizing for only two applications - browser and IDE somewhat limiting. Right now I have two browser windows open side by side on the same 30" monitor - one with the stackexchange posting, and one with the HN page where I'm replying to you. Often I'll have more than one XCode window open on the 30" display, but sometimes I need the whole display to have all the panels open and a reasonable view of Interface Builder. At that point, I'll use the 27" display of my iMac to display documentation. It's also very helpful to be able to have my task list open on the other screen and not have to keep opening and closing it. Summary: Multiple screens are good because you can use the whole of one of them to focus on something while still having something else available in the periphery. Giant screens are good because you can put more things on them together. Cost and desk space are real reasons not to have more and larger screens, but I find it hard to understand how less display can possibly be better in absolute terms.
Symmetry 16y ago
When I'm working on Windows I feel the same way, the way that two monitors lets me easily have two tasks going at once is really nice. When I have better window management facilities available though I find I prefer the flexibility of one big window. This is true even of the default GNOME window manager, Metacity, with its ALT-click behavior - but its even more true when I can install a tiling window manager like Awesome or XMonad.

rbarooah 16y ago

I find the idea of optimizing for only two applications - browser and IDE somewhat limiting. Right now I have two browser windows open side by side on the same 30" monitor - one with the stackexchange posting, and one with the HN page where I'm replying to you. Often I'll have more than one XCode window open on the 30" display, but sometimes I need the whole display to have all the panels open and a reasonable view of Interface Builder. At that point, I'll use the 27" display of my iMac to display documentation. It's also very helpful to be able to have my task list open on the other screen and not have to keep opening and closing it. Summary: Multiple screens are good because you can use the whole of one of them to focus on something while still having something else available in the periphery. Giant screens are good because you can put more things on them together. Cost and desk space are real reasons not to have more and larger screens, but I find it hard to understand how less display can possibly be better in absolute terms.

Symmetry 16y ago

When I'm working on Windows I feel the same way, the way that two monitors lets me easily have two tasks going at once is really nice. When I have better window management facilities available though I find I prefer the flexibility of one big window. This is true even of the default GNOME window manager, Metacity, with its ALT-click behavior - but its even more true when I can install a tiling window manager like Awesome or XMonad.