33 ms·

Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers

• kevmo314 5y ago
  Extra points if your curved ultrawide is so wide that putting it in portrait has it curving above your head.
  • kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    I fantasize about someone commercializing the deeply curved slot machine screens as general purpose monitors.
• Cerium 5y ago
  Why do people complain about wasted white space on the side of their windows? Who said you have to full-screen every application? My slack window is about 1/3 of a screen, zoom a bit smaller, Firefox about 2/3 of a screen, Outlook about 2/3. I think the only window I regularly make full size is the terminal.
  • RHSeeger 5y ago
    This is exactly what I was thinking. > Websites and documents usually end up with a lot of whitespace and padding around them I can't imagine have _any_ window full width on a large screen. I have 5 windows visible on my primary screen right now, and that's not even a lot for me. The browser, at max, is about 60% of the screen's width.
    • vbezhenar 5y ago
      I'm not comfortable with tiny text. I'm using 27" display and with my IDE full screen I can fit around 140 characters. HN is with 250% zoom and around 80% of browser width right now. Using those 14" displays is like using a phone, absolutely atrocious.
  • dariusj18 5y ago
    I think it's because Windows doesn't come with good window management. But now they have FancyZones[0] so it's much easier. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzones https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzone...
  • teddyh 5y ago
    Graphical web browsers were originally made, like other graphical programs, for a screen with a resolution of (approximately, depending on hardware) 1200×900, where “maximizing” windows was not really a thing, since multi-tasking was what everyone did as a matter of course, with multiple programs open at the same time in their own window. Web sites were designed to fit in a comfortable window size of, again approximately, 600 pixels in width. Most PC’s were, at the same time, usually equipped with 640×480 screens, with only some PC’s having higher, so to see the whole web site on a PC you would naturally maximize the web browser program to the whole screen. Since multi-tasking was not really a feasible thing on PC’s back then (due to memory and CPU limitations), it made sense to give the whole screen to a single program, and PC windowing systems afforded this use. However, when PC’s gained higher normal resolutions (800×600, then 1024×768, and higher) and multi-tasking became more realistic, this did not change the widespread user practice of full-screening programs on Windows! Instead, web site authors simply made web sites wider and wider. The users of large graphical displays did not initially complain, since their screens were wide enough to fit the ever-larger web sites, and these hardware platforms were falling out of use anyway. And so we come to today, when we have more pixels than we know what to do with, and enough RAM and CPU to run umpteen programs at the same time, but web sites are still designed to be viewed in a maximized window, and users are still maximizing the web browser, and both web browsers and most operating systems are affording this use.
• Fred27 5y ago
  I can't see that being practical. My setup for the last few years has been 2 ordinary monitors - one portrait and one landscape. I'll often read on the portrait and code on the landscape. It works for me. Give it a try.
  • tapvt 5y ago
    I use two moderately sized monitors, in portrait mode, as well as a larger monitor, in landscape between. code - browse, etc - tail logs
  • totoglazer 5y ago
    One almost wonders if practicality wasn’t the objective of the exercise. Almost.
    • politician 5y ago
      Truly a missed opportunity to demo Ski Free running on the last orientation.
  • ziddoap 5y ago
    With the only listed advantage being "longest line length" and disadvantage being "webcam starts sliding away", I'm shocked that you think a 22 degree rotation isn't practical.
  • vbo 5y ago
    I second this. A portrait monitor does wonders for coding (for me); My office setup consists of two portrait monitors plus my laptop screen in the middle and this works very well when multiple repos are open at the same time. I tend not to mess about with the windows displayed on the vertical monitors so I always know where to look if I need to change something (ie, backend on the left, frontend on the right). I've been planning to look into tiling window managers to see if I can optimize this further but it might be going a bit too far.
  • briamn 5y ago
    lol
• MoSattler 5y ago
  Why not just use two regular monitors then?
• nixpulvis 5y ago
  Horrific.
• GhettoComputers 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28794933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28794933 I posted this a while ago, I enjoy using a single monitor over multiple ones, multiple ones made sense when screen resolution was way worst.
• alanbernstein 5y ago
  Best suited for angular developers.
• nxpnsv 5y ago
  22 degrees, also known as the rotation of kings. Because it's majestic.
• yehudalouis 5y ago
  Sort of unrelated: The picture of the monitor rotated 22 degrees contains a sticky note with what appears to be some sort of token/key/password.
  • helb 5y ago
    it's base64-encoded "hunter2"
  • ZiiS 5y ago
    https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hunter2 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hunter2 (They even base64ed it)
• macinjosh 5y ago
  My preference is an “H” shape setup using 3 2560x1440 monitors. Middle screen is landscape with a portrait screen on each side. Portrait is great for reading long code, slack, email threads. Landscape monitor is used for everything else.
• djbusby 5y ago
  I've got 3, left is 90, center is 0 and right is -90. It's Tall,Wide,Tall layout. Works a treat.
  • ASalazarMX 5y ago
    Tall monitors must be hard on the neck if you frequently need to see the top half of it. The ergonomic recommendation is keeping the monitors at eye level. How do you deal with that?
    • ModernMech 5y ago
      To expand on my sibling post, since vs code is really the only thing I run on the portrait monitor, I can scroll anything I need to focus on to the center. You’re right it’s tough if there is a blank page and you have to write at the top, but most of the time I’m dealing with a long enough file that I can move what I need to focus on to the center.
      • ASalazarMX 5y ago
        I see. I used a laptop with two external monitors at 0° and 90° for a while, but I ended going out of my way to avoid the top half of the 90° because it strained my neck too much. I tried to fill it with a dashboard, but then I was only using a monitor and a half for work. I've been happily living with a modest 0°, 0° since.
    • DennisP 5y ago
      What I'd like: an editor with multiple tiled windows side by side, filling up a wide monitor, all showing the same text threaded through it. Line n at the bottom of one puts line n+1 at the top of the window to the right of it. Scrolling in one window scrolls them all. (Of course you could optionally split it up differently to see multiple files.)
      • 0des 5y ago
        Like a newspaper?
• Causality1 5y ago
  I don't understand why 3:2 and 16:10 have taken over the mobile space but if I want one for my desktop my choices are 1920x1200 or a thirty inch, thousand dollar monstrosity with bad response times.
  • jonfw 5y ago
    What's the thousand dollar monstrosity? The only decent resolution taller monitor I'm aware of is the huawei mateview, which isn't available in the US
    • kreetx 5y ago
      Perhaps the Dell 30" LCD UP3017A?
    • Causality1 5y ago
      There are some 30 and 32 inch 2560x1600 monitors, such as from Dell, but they're mostly geared toward offices and artists and have terrible input latency and response times.
  • kreetx 5y ago
    My sentiment exactly. 27" is a bit too tall vertically, but 26" or 25" would be ideal (with a resolution larger than 1920x1200).
  • void-pointer 5y ago
    If you’re in Europe, or are willing to attempt to import, the Huawei MateView is a brilliant 3:2 4K panel.
    • misterbwong 5y ago
      Why not something like the LG 27UK500-B on Amazon? 4K with 3:2 aspect ratio at ~$350
      • empiricus 5y ago
• gboss 5y ago
  I prefer to work with a single large external monitor. If my device is a laptop I keep it in clamshell mode when attached to an external monitor. I find switching applications with keyboard shortcuts and focusing on one thing at a time has improved my productivity. Using two or more monitors made it so easy for me to get distracted. To each their own though.
  • girvo 5y ago
    I use two monitors, but one is my tiny 13" laptop screen which has _only_ my browser on it (which holds my current project, and Slack et al. in various tabs) Everything else lives on my 32" 4K monitor. This gets me a nice compromise, as I found having two larger monitors leading to distraction as well (or just completely ignoring one of the monitors, so it added little value to me).
  • _9omd 5y ago
    I agree, I've also moved back to a single monitor. Less distraction, and for me also less neck pain as I keep what I'm focusing on straight in front of me, instead of having a monitor off to one side.
  • discreditable 5y ago
    Same here. In the circumstances where I need multiple things up at once I use Windows' window tiling features to arrange things as I need. They even made this functionality better in Windows 11. I'm a big proponent of using one good monitor over any number of other monitors. One thing that cracks me up is how many of my users request multiple monitor setups, but look at the keyboard while they type.
    • wruza 5y ago
      I tried powertoys fancy zones (from MS itself) and never looked back. Can’t tell if it will work with 11. My layout is 4 overlapping vertical full-height panes, so I can split the screen in half, or around 2:3 either way. E.g. my browser is usually x=0, w=3/5, and my vim is x=1/2, w=1/2. This way I can see the changes in 1500+-width but slightly overlapped by an editor to feel comfortable with line widths and their left margin. What stands out in fancy zones is that these areas do not have to tile each other and may overlap. Positioning windows in there is also very UX. I couldn’t find anything close enough in linux world (well, one may always program i3 or awesome, but it’s beyond my scope of interest). I don’t get why MS doesn’t just build it into windows, since it’s their own, free tool.
• mgaunard 5y ago
  Three monitors with one central in landscape remains the best layout.
  • enriquto 5y ago
    I have the opposite setup: three monitors but the central one is vertical. The central monitor is where the actual fucking happens. It only has a glorious 80x80 xterm with a large font.
  • bloopernova 5y ago
    I've found I like P-L-L Leftmost monitor is portrait, the other 2 landscape. Command line and documents on the portrait monitor. Editing/browsing in the centre. Mail and Teams on the rightmost landscape monitor, with browsing often moved there too.
    • mgaunard 5y ago
      My workflow is: - text editor with two columns in the middle - terminal with two colums on the right, left is git, right is build - terminal on the left for connecting to production, investigating things, and manual testing I also have a web browser (which contains chat and email) in the middle that I can swap to, but that means no coding. I've heard that a lot of people like to have a browser to look at documentation at the same time as they code, but I haven't really found this useful, in large part because most of the code I work with has no documentation (the code itself is the documentation).
  • bentcorner 5y ago
    Only issue with portrait mode is that some monitors have bad vertical viewing angles so when they're in portrait it can be hard to see if you're off-center even by a little.
• newbamboo 5y ago
  This is wrong. Best is 2 smaller monitors one at 90. Everyone knows this.
• triggercut 5y ago
  The ideal rotation is clearly π/8 rad
• codingdave 5y ago
  I just run on a 45" TV at 3840 x 2160. Sure, the response time is slow for gaming, but it works fine for movies and coding. And I have enough space that I can set each window to whatever size and orientation I want.
  • tsfranke 5y ago
    100% agreed. Previously dual monitor, 24" 1920 x 1080, portrait left, landscape right. left was usually for email and chat, right for coding and browser. Now it's a single 40" 4k tv as my display. Using gridmove to easily partition the screen as needed. It's like have 4 1080p screens with no border. Only downside I've come across is some screensharing apps will always share the entire desktop when sharing a single app (webex is worst offender) - just the app window will be shown, but with massive greyed out background. Can be fixed by changing desktop res, just an annoyance. Moving to a single massive screen has honestly lead to better productivity, but i possibly attribute that more to gridmove than overall screen real estate.
    • codingdave 5y ago
      I fix that by maximizing whatever app I'm sharing and upping the zoom. It looks comically large on my screen, but normal to the rest of the folks on the call.
    • alexfoo 5y ago
      For screen sharing I use Picture-in-Picture mode of my 43” 4K monitor (Acer DM431K) to give me a separate 1920x1080 screen to share when required. That way it is at the right size and resolution for everyone.
      • bertjk 5y ago
        Interesting.. does this mean you have two separate cables connecting to two different inputs of the monitor?
        • alexfoo 5y ago
• echelon 5y ago
  Once VR headsets gain large FOV and high DPI, working in VR will be ideal and an improvement over any sort of monitor. You can have 360+ degrees of scroll (beyond a full circle, you continue to wind into virtual space), spatial gestures to organize and manipulate your workspace. It'll be like physical trades where workers knoll out their workspaces. We'll finally be able to do the same without clunky, insufficient windowing systems. UI and 3D tools won't be limited to flat planes anymore, which will enable us to work with our hands. I'm incredibly excited for this tech to land. I think it'll introduce an order of magnitude increase in productivity once it begins to mature.
  • jmull 5y ago
    I'm not so sure. To work effectively and without friction, you want everything close at hand. I think even the current rectangular workspaces that monitors provide are getting a little too big for this. As the workspace gets bigger, the organizational burden increases, as does the effort to navigate through it -- even if that effort is mostly non-physical. I'm thinking we actually need better ways to focus, where the things we need for an extended activity -- and only those things -- are readily available in a simple workspace. I'm afraid a 3D VR/AR workspace will lead to me questing about, looking for that file or tool that is maybe 1440 degrees leftward.
  • criddell 5y ago
    > working in VR will be ideal and an improvement over any sort of monitor For me, that's definitely not true. I have no interest in wearing a headset for more than a few minutes at a time. I also like that I can turn my head and look out the window at trees, clouds or birds or rain. It's how I think. > I think it'll introduce an order of magnitude increase in productivity once it begins to mature. I guess that's a good thing, but it's not terribly high on my list of things I want to work on to improve my life.
  • notjustanymike 5y ago
    > spatial gestures to organize and manipulate your workspace These are things that sounds cool on paper, but become impractical when you do them hundreds of times a day. For common tasks, users gravitate to the least amount of effort. It's why almost everyone knows `ctrl + s` instead of using the `file -> save` menu. Engineers in particular are prescient about their shortcuts (especially VIM users...) Gestural interfaces will take off when they are the most efficient method for completing a task.
• renewiltord 5y ago
  Absolutely entertaining post. I loved it. Haha the sticky notes and photos. Quality entertainment.
• cabirum 5y ago
  Its ~23.2 deg for 21:9 ratio, not 22°. For a more common 16:9, the angle is 29°. (lambda w, h: math.acos(w / math.sqrt(w**2 + h**2)) * 180 / math.pi)(16, 9)
  • bigdict 5y ago
    I noticed that as well and typed arcsin (3/sqrt(9+49)) into WolframAlpha. It's clear in the picture that the corners of the monitor are not on the same level. But now I'm wondering what led to the error…
• throwaway4good 5y ago
  This calls for a motorized solution!
• floren 5y ago
  I like portrait mode, but a modern monitor is too tall when in portrait mode. I just want a couple 4:3 screens so I can rotate one (or both) into 3:4 ratio.
  • rbanffy 5y ago
    Huawei sells a decent 4K 4:3 monitor. It’s a bit on the expensive side for the 28” size, but the form factor is quite good. An alternative is sourcing 1200x1600 monitors on eBay.
    • layer8 5y ago
      The Huawei MateView is 3:2, not 4:3.
      • rbanffy 5y ago
        That’s kind of close enough. I liked the square one from Eizo, but it seems nobody else did.
• kraftman 5y ago
  I've tried a lot of different setups over the years at work and at home, with laptops, 3 monitors, thin monitors, vertical monitors, etc. I eventually settled on one 43 inch 4k monitor. I have it divided into 3 columns and 2 rows, and have everything I'm working on open at once so I don't have to tab between things, with the core work in center and the reference work either side.
• cecilpl2 5y ago
  I run 7 monitors. I've got a 2x3 grid of 24" monitors on a stand, and then a 27" widescreen standing tall beside it for code or a long terminal. It's fantastic, though I could stand to have another row above. It's nice rarely having to switch windows - everything I need and use is right in front of me.
  • 0des 5y ago
    That's cool! Any chance you can post a pic of your desk? I'd love to see this
    • cecilpl2 5y ago
      You'll have to excuse the mess :) https://imgur.com/a/5uTm7VB https://imgur.com/a/5uTm7VB Also obviously I hid all the proprietary stuff.
      • jedberg 5y ago
        Those last two on the right look like they're basically behind you. How do you use those?
        • cecilpl2 5y ago
          They are about 45 degrees to the right of center. I turn my head or swivel my chair.
      • 0des 5y ago
        woah thats bonkers! What do you do with all that real estate?
        • cecilpl2 5y ago
          Pretty much the standard tools that most people have open all the time I guess. I just want to see them all all the time without having to constantly switch windows or hide the thing I'm working on. Music, messenger, Discord, Slack, 2 or 3 instances of my IDE, source control UI, a terminal or three, documentation for the thing I'm working on, notepad++
• klyrs 5y ago
  I did the multi-monitor thing for years. Ultimately, I hate moving my head around that much. My current setup is a 4K curved screen, with i3wm. It's enough screen space for up to 9 usefully-sized panes, and also enough for a tall or very wide pane when the situation calls for it. The ability to reconfigure panes from the keyboard is a real game-changer.
  • ManuelKiessling 5y ago
    I‘m unable to find the combination of „4K“ and „curved“ and „affordable“. What model do you use?
    • bee_rider 5y ago
      I got a decently inexpensive 2k curved Phillips monitor at the beginning of the pandemic. Pretty happy with it (lucky buy, given that I didn't know it would be my window to the world for a couple years). At the time at least, 4k was still quite expensive. I don't know how much benefit 4k provides at typical desktop usage distances. (328E9FJAB but I suspect you can find plenty that are just as good in the 2k range).
    • klyrs 5y ago
      Well... I didn't say "affordable." I spent as much on this monitor as I spent on a laptop in grad school ($700ish). Three factors for me here: I transitioned to working from home and the expense was tax-deductable; I'm not in grad school anymore; I'm very frugal, so when do make a rare purchase, I go for quality.
      • ManuelKiessling 5y ago
        Cool. Would you mind sharing the make and model, though?
        • klyrs 5y ago
          Dell S3221QS This is not an endorsement. I've got some issues with the monitor -- it does something weird displaying certain patterns, which comes up for me occasionally. Also, sometimes, the curved screen bugs me, because straight lines aren't straight. YMMV
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• IncRnd 5y ago
  Is that a password written on the Purple postit that's glued to the monitor?
• 0des 5y ago
  > 22 degrees This angers me on a spiritual level. Where do your notifications spawn?
  • drjasonharrison 5y ago
    Notifications should spawn in /dev/null otherwise they interrupt flow.
    • 6c696e7578 5y ago
      They're there to make you work slower, perfect concentration breaker. Of course, if you're not busy they're fine as your attention may be needed, but they should definitely be off by default.
• can16358p 5y ago
  Am I the only one (fullstack programmer + designer + hobby photographer) here who's perfectly okay with a single laptop monitor? Maybe it's to do with I love being mobile, maybe it's that I use UI and text very small, but I can perfectly fit either 3 Vscode tabs, or website + PIP video, a few terminals, many views in Sketch or a combination of those in a screen (16" MBP). I'm also okay with working with Photoshop or sometimes DaVinci Resolve or After Effects too. Honestly I don't understand why so many screens are needed, haven't felt any need for more than one in 15+ years (though I've always used max possible resolution + very small UI scaling). I even don't use multiple desktops. Not a rant or criticism in any way, just trying to see an actual need for multiple (or rotated) monitors.
  • beebmam 5y ago
    I used to feel this way, and then I got old
    • panzagl 5y ago
      And monitor aspect ratios got shitty.
    • sumtechguy 5y ago
      Same. At one point I could easily read 4pt fonts. Now everything is a blur.
      • LegitShady 5y ago
        get glasses?
        • rectang 5y ago
          Glasses which focus at your computer distance (which varies by personal preference; measure it and take that number to your optometrist) help with presbyopia. However, there are many other eye ailments which tend to appear later in life and which glasses alone cannot correct: cataracts, macular degeneration, corneal dystrophies, etc. Some are treatable through other means such as surgery.
• chrismorgan 5y ago
  Why stop at rotation when you’ve got a full transformation matrix?
  • cylon13 5y ago
    Ideal Monitor Skew for Programmers
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• eludwig 5y ago
  Right now I use 2 4K 27" 120hz monitors from Acer (XV273K) and share both with a gaming PC and my Mac 16" laptop in clamshell mode. The Acers have a ton of inputs (2 DP, 2 hdmi) so it's easy to have all hooked up at once at the monitor end. I also generally prefer one large monitor, so I will angle/connect 2nd DP to Mac, unangle/remove 2nd DP from Mac as needed for work. I am mainly a front-end web dev these days and occasionally really need that second screen! But I don't like moving my head around and inevitable go back to single monitor when possible. Viva la flexibility!
• dcchambers 5y ago
  My ideal programming screen is a 1:1 square. Before I got my 4K display I tried using a 24" 1920x1080 monitor in vertical orientation, and found that even though 1080 pixels wide should be enough to render any website fine, some websites (including some pretty big/important websites) started treating my screen as a mobile device screen, hiding many elements and giving me the mobile view/UI. I guess those sites weren't detecting user agent and were detecting screen resolution? Idk but it was annoying. Got a 27" 4K screen last year and I have just left it in landscape mode...it's been fine.
  • Zak 5y ago
    > I guess those sites weren't detecting user agent and were detecting screen resolution? CSS does this via media queries and allows for different layouts without sending different content. Switching to a mobile-optimized layout at 1080px (note "px" doesn't mean physical pixels to a mobile browser) seems a bit aggressive though. I imagine it wouldn't be hard for a browser extension to override this behavior, though it could lead to broken layouts or horizontal scrolling.
    • kccqzy 5y ago
      Just zoom out. Make sure you use page zoom and not text zoom. No need for extensions.
  • swsieber 5y ago
    Some 4k screens allow you to split the screen down the middle and act as two monitors. Maybe that'd be nice for you?
  • bajsejohannes 5y ago
    > My ideal programming screen is a 1:1 square I have never tried it, but to me that seems ideal too. There seems to be close to zero demand for these, though, so I could only find this very expensive and not very high DPI monitor: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1138908-REG/eizo_ev2730qfx_bk_thin_bezel_26_5_tft.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1138908-REG/eizo_ev27... $1,429.00 for a 1920 x 1920 monitor? Meh. I'd rather stick with a single large landscape monitor.
• rsweeney21 5y ago
  For years I ran triple monitors side by side. Then I tried dual widescreen monitors stacked vertically. This has been game changing. It is much easier on my neck to look up 10 deg vs turning sideways 45 deg I can split VC code into three columns on my main monitor, then have two zones in the top monitor for other apps. 10/10.
  • ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
    Where does the webcam go?
    • ts4z 5y ago
      I have two 27" monitors and got a webcam between them. It works well if you aren't bothered by the hard border between monitors.
• sleepysysadmin 5y ago
  22 degrees? celcius? Currently im trucking 4 monitors. I am planning to buy a 43" 4k tv and drop down. Anyone else try this? Does it work out?
  • zamadatix 5y ago
    I did a 55" 8k for a bit but that was too physically big so looking at the edges was weird. 43" is probably a lot better in that regard but for me that turned me off single large displays instead of arrays. In the end I ended up with 6 displays in a 3x2 arrangement: 3x 1440p + 1x 4k on the primary PC and 1x 1440p + 1x 4k on the secondary PC and then I used Input Director so it feels like all 6 are one big computer when using the keyboard/mouse (used to use Mouse Without Borders but Input Director is far superior these days). I like this setup more because it gives me a larger primary monitor on each computer to work off of but leaves me separate monitors to put secondary things on. This comes with the bonus that fullscreen doesn't mean "and everything else must be gone" yet I still have the bigger primary display to fullscreen with. General note I've fallen in love with https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082845XM8/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082845XM8/ as it's simple, cheap, and extremely sturdy.
• ddek 5y ago
  This is completely repulsive. I love it.
• Bud 5y ago
  Absolutely absurd. Just get a monitor that doesn't have a hostile, stupid aspect ratio. Then rotate it 90° if that's what works best for you. Done.
• nimbius 5y ago
  fools begone. The ideal monitor rotation --the one that secures the most favour on HN-- is a slow 1-2 centimetre per second continuous orbit about the office in 2 dimensions on a tracked rail. This in turn ensures that one may not only glorify their monitors rotation, but also glorify their practice of standing whilst working instead of sitting. The movement --which rotates as well amongst its own Z axis-- also promotes good evangelical proselytization of the many woes of desk sitting, for example, that ten million people die per second for not standing at the lectern as a fourteenth century pork belly clearinghouse clerk. At days end then the monitor should be guided into a velvet sack, and stored gently atop a layer of old Haskell parchments that it may succor inspiration at the next stand-up which is conducted standing, as our christ lord intended.
  • bio_end_io_t 5y ago
    one screen comms, one screen work, comes in at #2
  • bluGill 5y ago
    Don't forget those us of old school guys. Everything should be displayed on paper. Changing fonts means physically changing the type. As everyone knows ed is the ultimate editor! Now get off my lawn.
  • aasasd 5y ago
    I'm upvoting this solely for the reason that I want more comments on HN similarly deliver aesthetic pleasure. (Also let me guess, one of your favorite authors is called DFW.)
  • Centmo 5y ago
    Now, you're going to need to stock up on these (https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/sparkfun-electronics/ROB-13065/5762402 https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/sparkfun-electroni...) and start re-wiring your office.
• lordnacho 5y ago
  Clearly there's a market for S-shaped monitors. You get the benefits of two landscape sections, two portrait sections, a central 45d section, and two small 45d sections, useful for putting notifications in. Kidding aside, I just have 2 gaming monitors on either side of my MBP, in landscape. A screen for monitoring prod, a comms screen, and a code screen. When needed I slide out a coding window to another monitor. I also use the extra desktops for my calendar and my task list. Three-fingers slide one way to see my calendar in maximized Safari, the other way to look at tasks in maximized Trello. About vertical coding, I tend to think that if you need to go vertical to understand the code, it's already too long. Note I don't mean it must fit in landscape, I'm saying if it doesn't AND you need to see it in vertical for it to make sense, that's a smell. YMMV.
  • ziml77 5y ago
    My setup in the office is a screen dedicated to Outlook, a screen for my code, and a screen for documentation and chat. I know some people in the office who made one or both of the side screens vertical, but that doesn't work for me. Vertical means I'm tilting my head or my eyes up and down which doesn't feel great. Also horizontal side monitors are in my peripheral vision, vertical side monitors extend too far up to be in my peripheral vision. I wouldn't want my center monitor to be vertical because then I couldn't easily put code side-by-side. I'd need to take over one of the side monitors which then would mean looking between them requires looking off-center and with a gap from the bezels.
    • function_seven 5y ago
      I miss that. When I was at work, I had a trio of old 20" (1680 x 1050, IIRC) screens. They were 2005FPW Dells that had a—for the time—beautiful IPS display. I got them used for around $80 apiece. Email on the left, documentation and browsing on the right, and code or database windows in the center. Now in my home office it's a pair of 24" 1920x1200 displays. They're great, but I miss the centered "main" screen, and the larger sizes are wasted on the peripheries anyway.
      • 5y ago
• AnthonBerg 5y ago
  Besides the straight-up superiority of the 22 degree angle, the monitor setup that works best varies greatly from one person to the next. It’s interesting how big the difference is. My favorite so far has been two 32” 4K IPS panels, flat!, plus a 15” laptop AND a tablet sidecar display occasionally. I appreciate the difference more clearly after I had a colleage who saw much of the same patterns in code and software architecture as I did – very similar end result of thought processes - but they were happy as a clam with just a 13” laptop and nothing else. It was so obvious that their mind just works differently from mine. My setup only served as a distraction to them and theirs to me.
• 1970-01-01 5y ago
  Why do we limit ourselves to right angle boxes? Why don't we have "GUI blobs" floating around our screens? Hipsters would be thrilled.
• Decabytes 5y ago
  My ideal is one in front of me, and one rotated vertically to the left. Vertical one is for chat, terminal, and or browser
  • pfkurtz 5y ago
    Add a vertical on the other side and achieve enlightenment.
• pfkurtz 5y ago
  2560x1080 curved horizontal with editor between two vertical 1080x1920, one with terminal, one with browser.
• FpUser 5y ago
  I used to have multiple 4K monitors hooked up. No more. Ended up with single large 4K monitor in landscape mode. Portrait mode makes for way too much head moving. Unless on the move never use laptop screen. My laptops are closed and hooked up to the same large 4K monitors.
• smhinsey 5y ago
  Back in the day, my setup was one 30" in the middle in landscape and a pair of 21" (or whatever that was that had the right dimensions) on the sides in portrait mode. The big screen was the primary and the other two were for reference. I still think this is the best setup. Right now I have 2 large curved displays and probably double the visible pixels but it's not as productive.
• undoware 5y ago
  Now, I don't like to judge the moral character of display positioning, but after carefully considering the .png of the preferred solution of this article's author, I am forced to question the nature of my reality. Excellent work. :)
• m_ke 5y ago
  I've been using a cheap SEIKI 4K TV for the past 6 years but recently moved my desk next to a window and the reflection on the glossy finish has made it hard to use. I'm looking for either a 32" 4K IPS monitor or a better TV to replace it but the options don't seem that great. Would love to get some recommendations on a good monitor or TV. Right now I'm considering https://www.amazon.com/LG-32UN880-B-UltraFine-Compatibility-Connectivity/dp/B08BCR862L https://www.amazon.com/LG-32UN880-B-UltraFine-Compatibility-... but I just missed the deal that costco had on it ($500) so might wait to see the price drop again because it's been on sale for that price a few times this year.
• KronisLV 5y ago
  As someone who's largely stuck with middle of the road hardware for financial reasons, i find that 1080p monitors are the sweet spot between having the screen estate for my programs and plenty of text on the screen, but also graphics performance if i ever want to do something else - from watching movies, doing 3D modelling or 3D printing, to gaming without resolution scaling. Of course, i splurged a little bit on an RX 570, so currently i have multiple monitors connected to my PC, two stacked vertically, one on my PC case to the side, and another turned in portrait orientation to the other side. Personally, that setup works for me, since the way OSes do window snapping and tiling is inconsistent, so it's easy to work in both Windows and Linux with multiple monitors, without trying to split everything up into smaller zones or trying to use a tiling window manager. However, if you want to customize things further (e.g. Windows doesn't really do vertically stacked snapping zones), the PowerToys FancyZones is suitable for this, whereas at least some Linux desktops can probably be customized to do this too (without spending too much time, i think LXDE didn't let you alter it that much, or another DE/WM, though my memory might fail me here). There's something immensely useful about having one monitor for previewing the webpage or software that i'm working on, one for writing the code or using my Git client of choice, and another for anything from documentation, chat apps in the background or even just watching a video. I'd say that the biggest problem with this setup is that i needed to make my own VESA mounts and a stand out of some PVC tubing and PLA plastic (3D printed and screwed on with bolts), since the options for any sort of custom monitor configuration out there are limited, if you don't want to spend a lot of money on it.
  • piyh 5y ago
    Your opinion of 1080p monitors is 100% tied to your GPU.
    • KronisLV 5y ago
      Apart from the reasons in the post above, there's also the fact that i wouldn't have enough space on my desk for multiple monitors at a much higher resolution, unless i were to use fewer of them - few large monitors at high resolutions (or just one) also work for some folks, of course. The aforementioned window snapping issue would also take work with my current workflow. And in regards to games and multitasking while playing them, having some titles take up the whole screen and not let me watch a video in the background would be annoying, too, unless i were to always play them in windowed mode. Oh, and don't get me started on software, especially the kind that doesn't utilize native UI frameworks, not respecting high DPI configurations and everything therefore being unreadably small. On the other hand, resolution scaling in Windows sucks in certain software, e.g. i have a 27" monitor at work and scaling with a factor of 125% makes things blurry, which is really annoying. So it's also a certain bit of modern OSes largely being defective and insufficient when dealing with certain configurations. Would having a better GPU be nice? Sure. In this economy? Probably not. I also throttle my RX 570 to a 50% power limit, otherwise it tends to get loud sometimes.
• intrasight 5y ago
  25 years ago I worked on the air traffic control system modernization. We were using Sony CRTs that were square 2Kx2K with hardware anti-aliasing. The were drop dead gorgeous. I assumed that 25 years forward (today) that everyone would be able to buy such monitors below $1000 (they were like $10K in 1996 dollars). Why no square monitors? Hollywood?
  • layer8 5y ago
    There is a square monitor from Eizo: https://www.eizoglobal.com/products/flexscan/ev2730q/ https://www.eizoglobal.com/products/flexscan/ev2730q/
    • intrasight 5y ago
      That's pretty nice. Sold out from what I can see. Next: how to add that hardware anti-aliasing. I assume that GPUs can do that to your desktop.
      • layer8 5y ago
        Ah, that’s unfortunate. Well, the model is already almost 7 years old. You could try to obtain the SQ2825 instead, but that’s not a consumer device and probably expensive: https://www.eizoglobal.com/products/atc/sq2825/ https://www.eizoglobal.com/products/atc/sq2825/
        • intrasight 5y ago
          Interesting. I can buy a panel and diy kit for this monitor on AliExpress. Hmm. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32955608335.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32955608335.html
          • layer8 5y ago
            Nice find. If it was VA like the SQ2825 I’d buy it. (Just a personal preference, IPS glow bothers me and I want the higher contrast of VA panels.)
• mgraczyk 5y ago
  This is interesting but the author considers only one degree of freedom, "roll". Equally important are "pitch" and "yaw". "pitch" is necessary to accommodate another kind of rotation, known in HCI as "slouch". "yaw" is important because sometimes your code is so elegant and impressive, that you need people walking by to see it more than you need to see it yourself. You use yaw to rotate your monitor away, toward the hallway or window.
  • cogburnd02 5y ago
    Author could just write a script that takes slope input from a Wiimote attached to the back of the monitor & sets xrandr accordingly. 3DOF?
    • utopcell 5y ago
      doesn't cover the case where the desk itself is sloped.
      • tomxor 5y ago
        Or the building is sloped, which is tricky because it's not clear whether it's best to align to the room or gravity. ...My last office was a "listed" building, in both the nautical and historic sense.
        • cogburnd02 5y ago
          I mean, unless you're working in the leaning tower of Pisa, I can't imagine any change of tilt would be in any way useful.
          • tomxor 5y ago
            An unmodified desk could have up to 3 inches of difference in height end to end, but to be fair the warped floors contributed to this more than the building structure. > I can't imagine any change of tilt would be in any way useful. It was somewhat useful for ball games.
• aimor 5y ago
  Not sure why, when every flagship phone has rounded corners, we don't all use circular monitors. It completely solves the rotation issue, and is stylish too.
• fragile_frogs 5y ago
  I got myself the 49" Ultra-wide monitor from Dell [1] and it's a fantastic product. I was never really a fan of using two monitors so having two 27" monitors in one screen is really amazing and it becomes even better if you combine it with FanzyZones [2] to manage the window layout. 1) https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-49-curved-monitor-u4919dw/apd/210-arnw/monitors-monitor-accessories https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-49-curv... 2) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzones https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzone...
• wruza 5y ago
  After reading this thread, things I [maybe] miss in desktop windows ui. 1. Different per-window dpi. Ctrl-scroll on a window title to zoom in/out at ~hw level. Apps shouldn’t care. 1a. Zoom in/out the entire desktop this way (ctrl-scroll on show desktop button). 2. OSX-like fit-size maximization instead of fullscreen. 2a. Alt-lbtn to move, alt-rbtn to resize, everywhere in a window. 3. Hotkey specific windows by alt-shift-digit, focus/raise by alt-digit. 4. Focus follows mouse, doesn’t raise. 4a. Make active windows fucking stand out again. And create a post-commit hook to autofire an idiot who tries to revert that. 5. Separate displays. I’d try have 2+ displays again if they were really separate and not continuous. Having a part of a window to stick out, misclicking into the edge, and windows popping up on a random display is just stupid. I want ~sort of~ two logins of the same user into one system. Switch by alt-esc. 6. Stick everything to everything and/or grid by 5mm to help my perfectionism.
  • marcellus23 5y ago
    > OSX-like fit-size maximization instead of fullscreen. What I wouldn't give for apps to actually take advantage of this. Even most of Apple's own apps just treat the zoom button like an "expand window to size of desktop" button.
  • joe5150 5y ago
    I'm curious what you mean by "OSX-like fit-size maximization". do you mean what happens when you double click on the title bar and the window fills the vertical space, but not necessarily the horizontal space?
    • wruza 5y ago
      Yes, this feature.
  • Oddskar 5y ago
    A lot of these you can build yourself with Hammerspoon if you're on OSX. Some quick comments since I've dabbled a lot in this: #2a Better just to have a grid that you can resize/move to using keyboard shortcuts; it's too much of a hassle otherwise. On Windows there's already split-screen support for this with Windows key + arrows for instance. #3 I've built this in Hammerspoon and it's a lot less useful than you think. It's better to have fixed shortcuts for apps that one doesn't have to consciously think about. #5 I have app shortcuts that does some smart things with cursor placement to make it easier switching between apps. I find this helps a lot with this. Most of the time I'm not dragging the cursor between displays at all due to this. Also helps a lot to have a shortcut for "move current focused app to x display".
• lovecg 5y ago
  My contrarian take: I prefer to work from a small laptop, with a non-fullscreen terminal window, and no IDE. This forces me to understand the code I’m working on better - since I can’t see a lot of things at a glance, I got really good at juggling concepts in my working memory. I’ve read that visually challenged people who get really good at super fast text-to-speech almost acquire a super power of quick comprehension, and I guess I’m emulating something like that with my minimalistic setup.
  • snissn 5y ago
    https://xkcd.com/378/ https://xkcd.com/378/
  • npsimons 5y ago
    > My contrarian take: I prefer to work from a small laptop, with a non-fullscreen terminal window, and no IDE. Ah, the Joey Hess DE: https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/
• fhd2 5y ago
  Not sure about "no longer worrying about that pesky 80 column limit"... For once, I have an ultra wide monitor, and having 1-2 files of code, a terminal and a space for testing and research all next to each other is quite great. Furthermore, I'm probably getting too old, but I find line length limits really helpful for readability: When you start to wrap those long lines, it kinda makes you think about introducing some temporary constants, extracting logic into a separate function, Not nesting conditions and loops too deeply... Maybe I'm just so very used to it, but I'm a fan, regardless of monitor size.
  • jeanloolz 5y ago
    I feel exactly the same about the column limit (PEP 8 advocates for 79 chars). It forces me to organise my code better one line at a time, and I'm convinced it makes the reading faster.
  • kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Fully agree on column limit. I don’t have a hard limit set, but when I start to need to scroll horizontally on a file in a dual-pane 2560x1440 setup, it forces me to refactor things out into dedicated variables and functions, reduce nesting, reducing chaining, etc. On an ultrawide I think things would quickly get out of hand.
• BoorishBears 5y ago
  I've owned almost every size and resolution of monitor to come out in the last few years (I don't know why, call it a hobby) - Right now I've settled for the XDR. Less screen real estate, but text clarity is great, and no weird Dual DP issues like the 8k Ultrafine before it - Second place is Dell's 40 inch "5k" ultrawide, the U4021QW. Good text clarity and plenty of vertical space (more than 34"/49" 21:9) - 3rd place goes to two 4k 16:9 28" monitors on fully adjustable gas spring arms (I use gas spring arms for all my monitors, including the XDR) - 4th place is a tie... Either 38" 1600p ultrawides (gives you more vertical space the 1440p panels in 34" and 49" models) if you care about vertical space (ie. you wish we had 3:2 monitors) or "5k" 34" ultrawides. Only two models were ever released with this panel, but you can still find them for sale new: PS341WU and 34WK95U - 5th place is 34" and 49" 1440p ultrawides. These are the most popular ironically, but once you've used any of the above it's like going back to the 1366×768 days when it comes to looking at text all day. Also curved monitors are a plague. Yes people get the impression that it's making it easier to use a wide screen, and it's a very intuitive conclusion to draw. But actually picture one of these monitors flattened out and you realize there's a minimal change in width. If you're doing color sensitive work you probably don't want a curve due to the distortion, and if you're not then the slight color shift from a flat panel is not something you'll ever notice or care about, and in exchange for that you'll likely get much much better panel uniformity (curved monitors are much more prone to BLB due to the complex internal mounting setup).
• tbrock 5y ago
  What is extremely annoying to me is that all these companies make ultra wide monitors without increasing the horizontal resolution. Why would anyone want an ultra-WIDE monitor with exactly the same resolution as a 4k monitor. The T E X T L O O K S S T R E T C H E D! They need to increase the horizontal resolution when they increase the width of the monitor to add value over a regular shape monitor with the same resolution. Are there any 32"+ ultrawide screens that have higher horizontal resolution?
  • SomeBoolshit 5y ago
    I've never encountered an ultra wide that didn't support the equivalent desktop resolution. Are you sure this wasn't a problem with the drivers or the capabilities of the device you plugged it into?
    • tbrock 5y ago
      No. Their max horizontal resolution (technical specification) is no better than a 4k monitor’s.
  • CitrusFruits 5y ago
    I've never seen this happen. If you look at Newegg for example all these monitors seem to have the proper resolution to accommodate their aspect ratio. https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=ultrawide https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=ultrawide *edited for grammar
    • tbrock 5y ago
      Literally none of them have a horizontal resolution exceeding that of a non-wide 4k monitor.
  • pitched 5y ago
    I use a Samsung Odyssey G9 and it has both the distance and resolution of two 28” 1440p monitors. Thing is a dream for coding with but kind of terrible for both movies and games because of that crazy aspect ratio!
• user-the-name 5y ago
  I don't think anyone posting here has actually read the linked article to the end.
• skunkworker 5y ago
  At the moment I have triple 24" 16:10 1920x1200 monitors in portrait with my laptop to the side on a mount. I find this can be advantageous to my current monitoring/programming setup as I can split the 3 monitors horizontally into 6 "zones". For the IDEs and what I am working on, this works great. But unfortunately monitor makers are no longer making 16:10 external displays. My dream display would be a 42" 6k 5760x3600 or 8k 7680x4800 (flat or slightly curved). As this would give ample real estate for full screen apps, the ability to work on IDEs that don't like multiple monitors, high pixel density for crisp text, and splitting into multiple zones.
• diimdeep 5y ago
  After quick searching, seems like screen arbitrary rotation and positioning can't be done in macOS.
• bo1024 5y ago
  No xkcd link? https://xkcd.com/2119/ https://xkcd.com/2119/
• htek 5y ago
  'Tis a bit of a silly article, I'd go insane trying to keep my application windows in the sweet spot for viewing them at a 22 degree rotation. One thing strikes me that I've wondered about when I would rotate some of my monitors: the color shift/viewing angle issue. I can understand in older monitors that have different viewing angles for horizontal and vertical, but some of my monitors over the years have been 176 degrees H + V or 178 degrees H + V, so why is there such a marked difference in what is being displayed when it is at 0 degrees rotation vs 90 degrees rotation?
  • bitcharmer 5y ago
    At first I thought this is a satirical article but then I realised the author was serious. I still think this ~22° rotation is utter nonsense.
    • justusthane 5y ago
      I am pretty sure it is satirical, or at least not meant to be taken super seriously. > It provides the longest line lengths and no longer need to worry about that pesky 80 column limit. You don't need a monitor at a 22 degree angle to eliminate 80 character line limits ;)
• gumby 5y ago
  For ergonomic reasons the rotation should change continuously and randomly so the developer doesn’t spend too much time in one position.
  • npsimons 5y ago
    Keeps one alert and attentive too! The challenge probably also helps sharpen the mind.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  I have another idea, rotate it 90, then rotate the bottom near you. Now everything looks like Star Wars Intro screen.
• pjs_ 5y ago
  Thinking about a monitor with a 1024:1 aspect ratio which only displays a single long line of text
• madrox 5y ago
  I think I’ll mandate this for my entire engineering team, but put each team member 1 degree off from each other and measure the change in productivity. Not only can we see if the results are reproducible, but we can determine how much a degree of rotation impacts productivity.
• scollet 5y ago
  I usually work from a Dutch angle because some code really has me cocking my head.
• henvic 5y ago
  If your desk is on a slight slope fix your desk. LOL I bet Objective-C developers would love the long lines of using it set to 22 degrees, though :)
• ewagsjr 5y ago
  I feel like any linter would complain about line length before you needed to worry about line length on the monitor lol..but hey if it works for you!
• taneq 5y ago
  For coding, document editing etc. a 5x1 portrait monitor wall is just about perfect (for me). It does make it harder to play games or watch movies but for a work machine that's kind of a plus. I do want one of those big shiny new curved widescreens though.
• StillBored 5y ago
  Since the advent of 16:10/16:12 monitors I've pretty much done the 3 monitor thing. One in landscape, and two in portrait. The two vertical ones get dedicated as an emacs monitor, and the second as a "docs" and status monitor. Usually running acrobat or a single browser window with an audio, or system status window pinned on top in an unobtrusive location. The single landscape monitor gets pretty much everything else, email, chat apps, xterms, etc, etc. Once in a while, the docs monitor will get replaced with a giant log/debug window, but that is pretty rare. So, I guess its a bit odd, but recently I started mapping the emacs and acroread with dedicated monitors to a hotkey so I can immediately switch back to them without the alt-tab cycling. So I have a really hard time understanding people with tiling window managers, or running on single screens. That might be the problem with the setup, because trying to use a laptop in a coffee shop is mostly impossible.
• irrational 5y ago
  I have 2 32" monitors (https://www.samsung.com/us/business/computing/monitors/uhd-and-wqhd/s32d850t-samsung-wqhd-32-led-monitor-ls32d85ktsr-za/ https://www.samsung.com/us/business/computing/monitors/uhd-a...) rotated 90 degrees (vertical). I became the "Oh, you're the guy with the two tall monitors!" guy at work. I like it because you can see so much code all at once. It is rare that the lines of code are so long that they go off the screen. I typically have the code full screen on the left monitor (well, I usually have a terminal window open at the bottom of the screen), the browser window filling the bottom half of the right monitor, and email/slack/etc. filling the top half of the right monitor. I've found this works best for me.
  • colonwqbang 5y ago
    I do the same. My ideal monitor would actually be a big square, or something similar like 4:3. The setup works great together with an automatic window manager like dwm.
  • lovelyviking 5y ago
    I went to check this link you've provided: (https://www.samsung.com/us/business/computing/monitors/uhd-and-wqhd/s32d850t-samsung-wqhd-32-led-monitor-ls32d85ktsr-za/ https://www.samsung.com/us/business/computing/monitors/uhd-a...) Wow you press Specs and the site scrolls to the Specifications section which is empty. Such an example of respect from Samsung. Amazing ...
• rswail 5y ago
  As I've got older, I need fonts that are larger than what the gurus at Apple seem to desire. On a 5K iMac with a 27" U2720Q (4K) right hand side monitor, I have most web pages at 110%. What I don't understand is why we've somehow got to the situation that a measure of font size has become resolution dependent. I'm just physically measure an "M" on my web browser, and it's 4mm (0.16" or 12pt). The Mac insists on using somewhere between 8pt and 11pt. I can't expand that by the minor variation without losing lots of screen space. I don't want a larger screen because the top of the screen is at eye level, which is the correct position ergonomically.
• DeathArrow 5y ago
  I use a 360 degrees rotation for my monitor. I found that it greatly improves my productivity.
• gawin 5y ago
  Get a single 43” 4K monitor. Then use a window manager that allows to automatically arrange windows. I build my own using Hammerspoon on macOS. Great productivity upgrade.
• meta-level 5y ago
  what might "aHVudGVyMgo" written on the post-it stand for?
• maydup-nem 5y ago
  > Longest line length! > like a thousand fucking characters can't wait to enjoy this on my 14" screen > pesky 80 column limit that pesky limit is there to protect my sanity against shitcoders (which some are forced to be in shit languages) so, please no
  • maydup-nem 5y ago
    what's with the downvote, did I just harass a shitcoder?
• rodrigods 5y ago
  Seriously?
• timka 5y ago
  What we need is short lines. Why? It's cognitively better. Fast reading apps optimize for eye movement. Also this is why boustrophedon is great. It makes your eyes move smoothly, not abruptly skip left after each line. This is better for your attention and beneficial for your health by keeping you balanced. You may notice the difference in how your sight/attention flow from left to right and in the opposite direction.