18 ms·

The art of the desk setup (2021)

128 points by bpierre 4y ago

dvh 4y ago
This topic was thoroughly explored in the second movie of the Czech "How poets..." franchise: https://youtu.be/MQcfxTHPgek https://youtu.be/MQcfxTHPgek
Avlin67 4y ago
a manly desk is full of bicycle/troller tools because your desk is also a bicyle garage@home. my desk is horrible to look at but i can fix my girl scooter with 2ns latency or epxoy glue something. my desk is multitasking ready.
OptionX 4y ago
Still baffled by the amount of people rocking a 60% keyboard. The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key. I mean its tiny and cool at all, but unless you're actively moving from place to place with it you're sacrificing a lot of typing convenience for nothing (other than aesthetics I guess). You want to go tkl and pull out your number pad when/if you need it more power to you, but anything smaller than that and your working against yourself in my eyes.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  > The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key for a LOT That varies quite a bit between individuals. Doing native mobile dev work under macOS, I can count the number of times I need an F-key in an entire month on a single hand. They don't get used anywhere near enough to need their own row. That said the presence of an F-row doesn't bother me — it's not as if they're hurting anything by being there — but there are no keyboards with both an F-row and my preferred layout (the HHKB/Tsangan variant of 60%) so few of my keyboards have F-rows.
  - tkk23 4y ago
    How do you debug? Do you entirely use the mouse to step through code?
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      I'm not frequently stepping through code, so yes. Pause/Continue/Continue to Current Line have more maclike mnemonic key shortcuts and if I start using the others more, they can be remapped to more maclike shortcuts pretty easily.
  - Descon 4y ago
    Shift + f6 in jetbrains products to rename is one of my most used shortcuts.
    - simooooo 4y ago
      I’ve always had friction renaming files in rider. Never would have thought of that shortcut
  - sylens 4y ago
    For me, it's less about the function keys and more about separating Escape from the ~/` key. I tried a 65% board once and having to use a modifier key to access those symbols drove me nuts.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      This is one of the reasons why I like the HHKB/Tsangan variant of ANSI 60/65% in particular: it has a dedicated ~/` key[0]. [0]: https://hhkb.io/layout/ https://hhkb.io/layout/
- alxlu 4y ago
  I think most people just use a layer for the F keys. It also means their fingers don’t need to travel as far to hit them.
- rgoulter 4y ago
  > You want to go tkl and pull out your number pad when/if you need it more power to you, but anything smaller than that and your working against yourself in my eyes. I'd put it the other way: if you have a keyboard where all your thumb can do is press the spacebar, you're much more limited compared to if each thumb can hit 2-3 keys. With keyboards with 2-3 thumb keys each, suddenly it's possible to use layers to bring many keys to within easy reach of the hand. -- On a standard keyboard, you'd either have to reach or move your hand to hit the ` key; whereas with layers, no hand movement/stretching is required. Layering trades-off hand movement / stretching, at the cost of being more complicated to use. (Not having to stretch your fingers is an increase in comfort). The only real downside to small-keyboards-with-thumbkeys I've experienced is for one-hand-on-keyboard usage; e.g. FPS games pretty much need to have a number row. Though, I could do CAD okay without a number row (e.g. by using a numpad layer).
  - majormajor 4y ago
    I wouldn't give up number row and Fkeys for more chording for two reasons. One, I already have muscle memory for existing keyboard bindings to F keys and the existing locations. Two, I have multiple devices, and I can't drop new spacebar replacements onto the mobile ones. Why optimize for just the desk? I like to move around to change things up sometimes. (I do take advantage of things when I'm at the desk by having a mechanical keyboard... but it's a kinesis with more keys than a laptop, not fewer.)
    - airstrike 4y ago
      > I wouldn't give up number row and Fkeys for more chording for two reasons. Here's a third reason, based on personal experience (n=1): chording actually creates more strain on your hand/wrists than single keystrokes
      - laserlight 4y ago
        QMK’s One Shot Keys/Layers is a solution [0]. [0] https://docs.qmk.fm/#/one_shot_keys https://docs.qmk.fm/#/one_shot_keys
- bitwize 4y ago
  Making your own split ergonomic woodgrain keyboard is a hacker rite of passage, like forging your own lightsaber. And you do use vim, right, or at least VSCode in vim mode? What do you need f keys for?
- anikom15 4y ago
  It could be a generational thing. I think people like me who started on DOS are more likely to want full keyboards, while the younger people are used to laptops and never became accustomed to using function keys. Also, when GUIs happened the function keys turned into a second class citizen as functionality was brought to the toolbar. Most kids never use F keys now because they never had to. For these younger people, the numpad and navigation keys are an impediment to reaching the mouse. For me it’s the opposite: the navigation keys is how I normally navigate (outside of vi controls) and the numpad is for numbers. The mouse is the input device of last resort.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    I think the platform one grew up on makes a difference too. People from a Mac background generally won't be as inclined towards F-keys, since Mac OS instead prefers mnemonic shortcuts (e.g. ⌘R instead of F5 for Refresh). This is the case for me. I grew up with Macs with full keyboards through the 90s and early 00s, but the Fkeys rarely got used and so they don't get much traffic from me now either.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    I started on DOS and early Linux. F-keys absolutely make sense. I never incorporated home, end, page up/down into my flows. Essentially anything to the right of the arrow keys has no use in my life except SysRq and delete. The keyboards I liked best had the large backwards east asian mcnugget style enter key. These days I use an ergodox. Ortholinear is meh, but everything else about it is great.
  - least 4y ago
    > For these younger people, the numpad and navigation keys are an impediment to reaching the mouse. For me it’s the opposite: the navigation keys is how I normally navigate (outside of vi controls) and the numpad is for numbers. The mouse is the input device of last resort. The mouse, the navigation cluster, and the number pad all require you to remove your hands from the home keys position in order to use them. Many of these smaller layout keyboards facilitate accessing these and the function keys under layers. I have several of these layer toggles on alpha keys, including the ones on the home row. The question then is does the chorded key offer more utility than a discrete physical one but requires you to move your arms away from home position? I think in many cases the answer is yes, it does, and it's not simply about aesthetics. It's more efficient keyboarding in most circumstances. Its weakness of course is in situations where accessing keys is time sensitive. The most obvious case where chording is strictly worse than discrete keys is gaming, where you need to be able to press various buttons quickly and often in very quick succession. In most other standard computing tasks where you're primarily typing, that isn't a meaningful consideration.
- ge96 4y ago
  65/68% gang I need the arrow keys
- nine_k 4y ago
  With a keyboard firmware like QMK, you just put everything to layers, and don't move your wrists. It's actually faster than reaching to a distant separate F-key and then.back to the home row, properly aligned.
- robluxus 4y ago
  My main issue with 60% are the lack of arrow keys. I haven't used F-keys for years (I do use the media keys on the F-row every once in a while) but my muscle memory needs dedicated arrow keys.
  - forrestthewoods 4y ago
    I don’t need _all_ the arrow keys. Just a few. F5 for refresh. F10/F11 for step debugging. F12 for goto definition.
    - sph 4y ago
      Which arrow keys out of four you don't need?
      - maccard 4y ago
        I use 0/4 as I use vim bindings on all my editors, but the numpad and F keys are worth having a full size keyboard for.
      - forrestthewoods 4y ago
        Ha. I meant function keys.
  - abudabi123 4y ago
    Would be nice to have an easy interface experience to set the F keys as radio buttons or dockbar icons, one of the F keys will allow ambidextrous arrow keys, on the left-hand "wasd" and on the right-hand "hjkl". I want to blend emacs/vi muscle memory.
  - granra 4y ago
    On my 60% keyboard I have set caps lock as a fn key where holding that down and any of the WASD keys gives me arrow keys. I use my pinky to hold down the caps lock key and the others to navigate the arrow keys and I can do all of it with my left hand. Similarly I have media keys mapped on the same function layer.
- zppln 4y ago
  I don't understand how people can live without a numpad. I feel so much more comfortable typing numbers on one compared to using the top row.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  I want a keyboard with the number pad on the left side. My mouse needs to the on the right side for my hand, and the number pad on the left side means I have to move my hand a lot less to use the mouse. Given that no such keyboards exists, a moveable number pad is the second best option.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    They do exust but they're. For some reason they are kbown as "southpaw" keyboards. Here's one that I really wanted, but I couldn't justify the outrageous price. https://switchplate.co/collections/southpaw-full-size-group-buy https://switchplate.co/collections/southpaw-full-size-group-...
- aequitas 4y ago
  > The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key. This depends on your platform. On macOS, almost all keyboard shortcuts are centred around the cmd/apple key next to the spacebar (where alt would be on a non-mac keyboard) and an alphanumeric key. F-keys are hardly used and if they do, you know you're likely dealing with a an app ported from Linux or Windows or which is cross-platform. It's personal preference of course, but I like my shortcuts this way as I just have to thumb the cmd key and press any other key within reach, instead of having to stretch to f-keys (cmd+q vs alt+f4) or use any of the other fingers to use the ctrl key for copy pasting (cmd+c vs ctrl+c). I use the small Apple keyboard as a daily driver on my desktop instead of the full version because it has the exact same layout as the keyboard on my laptop. Which is great as I don't have to built muscle memory for 2 layouts. Of course you are missing dedicated home/end/page keys. But the fn button along with the arrow keys make up for that (also cmd/opt + arrow keys often works better for navigating anyways as they are aware of paragraphs, line endings etc).
- gabrielhidasy 4y ago
  I honestly feel it's easier to type fn (caps and \ when hold in my board) + numbers for f-keys than to use dedicated ones. Now 40%, that's too little keys, a number row is important
seltzered_ 4y ago
Article kinda reminds me of 'airspace' : https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-global-minimalism-startup-gentrification https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-... . Theres something too minimal and clean about it all. FWIW, I used to have a nice remote office setup and still found myself wanting to run away from it (to a library or coffee shop) to meet a form of Marchetti's constant ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant ), and started going down the rabbit hole of https://reddit.com/r/ergomobilecomputers https://reddit.com/r/ergomobilecomputers
- least 4y ago
  I feel like this person is simply in a bubble that isn't a reflection of the real world, or in some cases just making asinine statements. High speed internet being homogeneous is not a bad thing. If you actually want to disconnect, ditch your devices and go out into the wilderness instead of booking your next AirBnb and going to the same trendy coffee shops. It's supremely easy to find spaces that are not designed with these sensibilities all over the world.
pj_mukh 4y ago
I would love to learn more about people who've put this much thought into mobile work stations. I move around enough that I can't invest in a permanent setup. Right now, my setup is a macbook in a roost stand, with an ipad propped up side-caring. Decent mechanical keyboard + mouse and a best effort at hiding wires. Would love to hear about other options.
- pfkurtz 4y ago
  If I were mostly mobile I would buy one of those 2-way screen extenders that attaches to the back of the laptop and gives you 3 monitors, and/or a large vertical touchscreen to use alongside. Trackballs are nice to have in addition to mice.
  - franga2000 4y ago
    I definitely wouldn't recommend those attached screens. They're small, bulky, usually have low quality displays and none of them can be used without a kickstand, at which point you might as well get a portable monitor instead. They come in a variety of sizes, with many different features (OLED, touchscreen, speakers...) and at many different price points. I used a 17" DIY portable monitor for about two years when I didn't have a permanent workspace and the only complaints I have about using it are solved in most commercial models, I just stubbornly wanted to use my own. Just be careful with the cheap ones as they often have the same problems: poor viewing angles, no backlight adjustment, wobbly kickstand, multiple cables required....
- tcoff91 4y ago
  This tripodsy portable tripod standing desk is the best ive seen for portable ergonomics. I have one and its pretty awesome. The keyboard tray is a little small though so you will need a compact keyboard. https://a.co/d/8aoiewx https://a.co/d/8aoiewx
  - fmajid 4y ago
    I have this inexpensive one, which is very stable: https://www.pulse-audio.co.uk/product/pls00453/ https://www.pulse-audio.co.uk/product/pls00453/ The lip around the platform (to prevent a projector from falling over the edge) may interfere with your ty[ing if you have a very thing laptop, however.
Brajeshwar 4y ago
This is Nice. Well, I started with an air of Zen[1] when the Pandemic started and now I'm in my natural habitat[2]. But one day, one day, I will have a desk setup worthy of an essay. Btw, love Arun's setup and will refer to his articles for inspiration. 1. https://unsplash.com/photos/fGkBx7hX9Ms https://unsplash.com/photos/fGkBx7hX9Ms 2. https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-desk-2022.jpg https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-desk-2022.jpg
rogerclark 4y ago
In my experience, people with super clean desks aren't consistently productive. Garbage or dirty dishes are the byproducts of computer work. If you aren't neglecting the cleanup sometimes, you probably aren't working that hard.
- mpeg 4y ago
  I feel the opposite way. It’s very hard for me to be productive with a messy desk, a clean desk helps me focus
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Same. If there's an empty can from a drink I just finished sitting to my left for instance, it will bother me to eventually the point of being a distraction. Plates/bowls/etc usually aren't at my desk in the first place since I have a disinclination towards eating there but on the occasion I do the first thing I do after finishing is to take the dish downstairs to put in the sink for washing later. For more general desk junk buildup I have to neaten it up every week or two or it too will become a distraction.
    - aliqot 4y ago
      It takes a bit of practice, I'll admit. Start with some basic desk clutter items like a nice cigar that you can rest on a stately ash tray, something that's hard to knock off the desk and takes a while to enjoy. Have a puff between builds, nothing too serious. Once the ash layer builds up it makes things like a ramen bowl less prone to sliding off. I can't just walk off without mentioning the importance of a tactical housecat capable of pre-cleaning the dishes so as to not attract vermin- the plus side being if said housecat is a subpar dishwasher, they're all too willing to take care of any enterprising houseflies bound for a meal.
      - CSSer 4y ago
        Are you Charles Mingus’ ghost?
pfkurtz 4y ago
Very disappointed by this. I've got mounted vertical monitors surrounding an extra wide curved monitor on a desk that has 3 distinct surfaces at different heights and a hidden shelf beneath, with a pull-out Kinesis keyboard and both a mouse and a trackball, with a large drafting desk running along one side, with a shelf above it for technical books.
- platz 4y ago
  he just found a way to justify his love of expensive things.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  His keyboard was by far the weakest part of this. Click the link at the top of his post ("Update:") to his newer setup, and you'll see that he upgraded the keyboard substantially to something in the ergo tier.
kumarvvr 4y ago
How does one not cringe hard when designers talk about "values" as inputs in design process?
- helmholtz 4y ago
  Why? Your whole being leads to a design process. Your whole being, the circumstances you grew up in determined what you value. This determines whether you like cozy spaces, or stark sterile spaces, dark or light wood, pops of colours or neutrality. If you grew up with hoarders, perhaps you were always drawn to zen minimalism. And if you nourished that seed, later in life, you wouldn't just be able to leave that need at the door when you started designing something. You'd bring your whole value system to it. You'd look for elimiation. Same with if you like symmetry, or if you like "authenticity" which is maybe just a posh word for transparency of purpose. My favourite example of this is the Windows Phone. They assumed people are digital natives, and don't mind flat rectangles which tell you just the information you need (live tiles) and no more. It started the downfall of skeumorphism and put paid to Apple's old iOS design too, but in effect, it was driven by a value system of an interface being digital-first and not needing to conform to physical reality since people are well-versed with the digital world. Perhaps designers love to talk too much about this stuff, all of it in hushed worshippy tones which can be off-putting. But there are kernels of truth in it, I think.
DeathArrow 4y ago
When it comes to work functionality and comfort are top priorities. Aesthetics, price, history and philosophical considerations are not.
- least 4y ago
  I'd argue that aesthetics do serve a functional role in a workspace. This is why many people put photos of their family at their desk for a very easy to understand example. It does not do something specific to your work, but it certainly serves a function to the person doing work. Beautiful objects can serve a similar purpose for a lot of people. For me it's almost always part of the consideration, though I'll concede that for items that are required for work, it needs to be able to do that well first.
  - pnut 4y ago
    I personally keep a photo of my family on my desk as cue to moderate my instinct to rage quit when the latest nonsense flows downstream. "You're doing it for them" Nothing to do with aesthetics, although they are lovely.
    - least 4y ago
      I did not say that the family photo is aesthetics, just that it can serve the same purpose as nicely designed objects. Both calibrate your mind for work. The appearance of things certainly influences how you think if you're looking at them all day.
- criddell 4y ago
  Don Norman has studied aesthetics and productivity quite a bit and come to a different conclusion — attractive things work better.
akho 4y ago
This monitor height (and size) looks incredibly painful. The desk top material is just an incorrect choice. I don’t understand how they live with the felt pad.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Monitor height looks about right to me, depending on where the poster’s eyes are relative to the monitor. My setup has monitors on arms at a similar height, lining up their horizontal centers with my eyeline so my head position and back are neutral.
  - akho 4y ago
    Typical ergonomic guidelines are to place monitors so that your eyes are 2-3 inches below the top of the screen (looking down is much easier than looking up). The monitor in the photo is a 40”. Either they’re a giant, or their knees are well above desk level, or they have neck pain issues.
    - laserlight 4y ago
      I find the typical monitor height guideline very uncomfortable. As a developer, I usually look at the bottom edge of the screen (terminal windows, replying to online discussion). Therefore, I place my monitor higher than recommended.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Yea, I don't understand how people use monitors where the lower edge is on level with their eye line. My neck hurts just looking at the pictures. But I did start in the time when we had dedicated holes for CRT monitors in desks so you could put them low enough.
Mistletoe 4y ago
> Now, with most knowledge workers going remote because of the pandemic, the desk setup has become essential. The phrase “knowledge workers” makes me physically ill.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  Why? Isn't it just another term such as white collar worker?
  - JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
    It implies that people that don’t sit at a desk don’t have knowledge or use knowledge or advance knowledge and nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, my life experiences say it is the opposite.
    - 411111111111111 4y ago
      It never implied that to me. For white collar, soft skills are more important then domain knowledge for example and for blue collar work you'll need to be able to physically apply the knowledge. That would leave the term to mean "your soft skills and handiness are secondary to your domain knowledge"
- mhd 4y ago
  I rarely see it self-applied, though. It always seemed to be a more HR-centric / economist verbiage, in the same line as "human capital" and "downsizing". Whereas people actually call themselves "rockstar developers" "language ninjas" or "data scientists".
- fmajid 4y ago
  The term came out of management consulting (Peter Drucker IIRC) so it's not surprising it's more associated with manager happy-speak gobbeldygook than actual humans. Same with "content producer" (suggests undifferentiated glop, doesn't it?) or "thought leader".
tapanjk 4y ago
No offence, but this sounds expensive and stressful. I used to obsess over things like "good design", minimalism, perfectionism, etc. Since I stopped obsessing, I feel better: less stress, fewer expectations from my environment, better focus on what I need to accomplish (rather than by what tools) etc. Don't get me wrong, I still clean out my desk once in a couple of days, but am no longer distracted by small stuff every minute. For e.g., I love a good mechanical keyboard and bought one a few years ago and never looked back. I am happy with this keyboard and will use it until it breaks down. I love fountain pens and bought one 7 years ago, and now I don't think about pens anymore. Not that I do not care about a good pen or a good keyboard, but because I am happy with what I've got.
- camillomiller 4y ago
  Another thing I notice is that all these desk setups look unnaturally tidy and uninhabited. Show me your desk setup after an 8-hour workday with two overlapping deadlines, then we’ll talk.
  - laserlight 4y ago
    Sterile design is a problem in general. I feel like these kinds of designs serve to be photographed than used.
  - helmholtz 4y ago
    Mine looks exactly the same because I clean it. I work paperfree anyway, since I can do engineering on the PC. I ruthlessly move everything out of my visual periphery and in a storage or a cabinet away from my eyeline. Whether that makes me a deadened robot, or even marginally more effective than the next guy, is of course not entirely clear. It's just a compulsion. But the point is that people who are fastidiously tidy with their workdesks aren't mythical unicorns, but everyday people.
    - comfypotato 4y ago
      You didn’t say your computer desktop was tidy! I think there’s a place for in-person documents. Perhaps I’ll have a nice tablet at some point, but I haven’t yet replace pencil and paper for creative doodling.
thefz 4y ago
I think people like the author go through all this hassle just to post photos of their setup online and get praises from like minded users. That seems over engineered, over-thinked and downright not practical.
- sph 4y ago
  This is what karma-driven social media drives people to do. Stage (in pictures) something cool for likes/upvotes/thumbs up. It looks impractical, but the pictures, colours and immaculate arrangement of the desks drive us to click the red heart button. OP feels good, the reward system is strengthened. One thing is certain, none of those setup look used. They don't look like the desk of someone that has just finished designing or creating something very hard for the past few hours.
  - thefz 4y ago
    Precisely. I follow some Linux, small network and homelab subreddits and the same plague has taken over these places too. Just picture after picture of a fresh install or a machine or a perfectly cable-managed home switch with no content whatosever.
  - maccard 4y ago
    > One thing is certain, none of those setup look used. They don't look like the desk of someone that has just finished designing or creating something very hard for the past few hours. If you share a photo of your bedroom with someone for whatever reason do you share an unmade bed to show how it looks after you've slept?
  - fmajid 4y ago
    Deskporn. Edit: I just googled it, and sure enough, it already exists: https://www.reddit.com/r/DeskPorn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DeskPorn/ Rule 34 strikes again! By that token, mine must be some sort of unspeakablly deviant corner: https://majid.info/office/ https://majid.info/office/
- criddell 4y ago
  I think you might be overthinking this. People enjoy what they enjoy. This person gets a lot of joy making a space they like to spend time in. There are car buffs, cycling fanatics, outdoorsmen, musicians, woodworkers, and all kinds of other people who put similar amounts of thought into their gear and space.
t00 4y ago
Slightly off topic thought: article mentions carrot on which OP works. I am so grateful to live in Europe where fertility services are just there...
- zol 4y ago
  It's surprising they're not free or mandated as part of health care in the US given our falling birth rates and xenophobic fear of immigration.
jemmyw 4y ago
It was an interesting read. Didn't feel that this person really followed their own rules about pre-owned. It wouldn't be for me, it feels like a very stark style. I got a really nice large wooden desk for cheap from a store in the US when I lived there, it was <50% retail price because of some bad surface scratches. Here in NZ wooden furniture is stupidly expensive. I've just finished, nearly 10 years later, resurfacing it. Plenty of space for crap on top, plus three drawers to hide cables, hankies etc. I've got one of those Aeron chairs. It was my chair at work years ago and then through the company being bought out, remote working and bad record keeping it ended up being mine. The most important thing for me about a working area is that I can have all my stuff close by. Guitar on one side so I can take a music break from work. I usually have a painting on the go too as another rest from work hobby, so I've got a crappy easel on the other side. It's not the cleanest area, but it's the first time in my adult life that I've had a space just for myself.
jupp0r 4y ago
Please get a decent microphone if you don't want to wear a head set. Most room mics are just unbearable on Zoom. The Logitech one built into the webcam certainly is.
- skydhash 4y ago
  And they’re cheap. I bought a usb mic after I read some post about the importance of audiovisuals for video meetings, and it’s good enough to actually record songs. I put it on a stand for ergonomics and the whole thing cost less than 50 USD.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
That's a desk that no-one works at.
- criddell 4y ago
  Is it that hard to imagine that they tidied up before taking a photo?
mhd 4y ago
And here I am with my 23" acrylic Cinema Display and yellow-tinged original Natural Keyboard…
amadeuspagel 4y ago
"For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart." - Morton Feldman
sunjester 4y ago
As someone who had the pleasure of pushing devs around from time to time (the boss..) this is displeasing. More work. less desk setup.
- theCrowing 4y ago
  Are you peter gregory?
Bendy 4y ago
Reading this article made me want to listen to Eyeliner’s Larp of Luxury again. My setup is my laptop on an Ikea Björkåsen (featuring cupholder with nifty notch for the mug handle) and my arse on a Poäng. If that’s not minimal I don’t know what is.
rawoke083600 4y ago
We must never forget there was a time our great and successful (otherwise we wont be here) ancestors had todo their dailygrind and office'ing in a cave with no rgb backlight or standing desk !
Avlin67 4y ago
oh boy… just get 2 or 4 4K 120 HDR oled monitors and proper mechanical key board and use a thick proper plywood base plate so that nothing moves.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
He has a felt desk mat that "reduces the visual clutter that the peripherals would otherwise create on the bare desk surface". Also, "The choice of computer, in this case, isn’t that important." Definitely has different priorities than I do.

128 points by bpierre 4y ago

dvh 4y ago

This topic was thoroughly explored in the second movie of the Czech "How poets..." franchise: https://youtu.be/MQcfxTHPgek https://youtu.be/MQcfxTHPgek

Avlin67 4y ago

a manly desk is full of bicycle/troller tools because your desk is also a bicyle garage@home. my desk is horrible to look at but i can fix my girl scooter with 2ns latency or epxoy glue something. my desk is multitasking ready.

OptionX 4y ago

Still baffled by the amount of people rocking a 60% keyboard. The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key. I mean its tiny and cool at all, but unless you're actively moving from place to place with it you're sacrificing a lot of typing convenience for nothing (other than aesthetics I guess). You want to go tkl and pull out your number pad when/if you need it more power to you, but anything smaller than that and your working against yourself in my eyes.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
> The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key for a LOT That varies quite a bit between individuals. Doing native mobile dev work under macOS, I can count the number of times I need an F-key in an entire month on a single hand. They don't get used anywhere near enough to need their own row. That said the presence of an F-row doesn't bother me — it's not as if they're hurting anything by being there — but there are no keyboards with both an F-row and my preferred layout (the HHKB/Tsangan variant of 60%) so few of my keyboards have F-rows.
- tkk23 4y ago
  How do you debug? Do you entirely use the mouse to step through code?
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    I'm not frequently stepping through code, so yes. Pause/Continue/Continue to Current Line have more maclike mnemonic key shortcuts and if I start using the others more, they can be remapped to more maclike shortcuts pretty easily.
- Descon 4y ago
  Shift + f6 in jetbrains products to rename is one of my most used shortcuts.
  - simooooo 4y ago
    I’ve always had friction renaming files in rider. Never would have thought of that shortcut
- sylens 4y ago
  For me, it's less about the function keys and more about separating Escape from the ~/` key. I tried a 65% board once and having to use a modifier key to access those symbols drove me nuts.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    This is one of the reasons why I like the HHKB/Tsangan variant of ANSI 60/65% in particular: it has a dedicated ~/` key[0]. [0]: https://hhkb.io/layout/ https://hhkb.io/layout/
alxlu 4y ago
I think most people just use a layer for the F keys. It also means their fingers don’t need to travel as far to hit them.
rgoulter 4y ago
> You want to go tkl and pull out your number pad when/if you need it more power to you, but anything smaller than that and your working against yourself in my eyes. I'd put it the other way: if you have a keyboard where all your thumb can do is press the spacebar, you're much more limited compared to if each thumb can hit 2-3 keys. With keyboards with 2-3 thumb keys each, suddenly it's possible to use layers to bring many keys to within easy reach of the hand. -- On a standard keyboard, you'd either have to reach or move your hand to hit the ` key; whereas with layers, no hand movement/stretching is required. Layering trades-off hand movement / stretching, at the cost of being more complicated to use. (Not having to stretch your fingers is an increase in comfort). The only real downside to small-keyboards-with-thumbkeys I've experienced is for one-hand-on-keyboard usage; e.g. FPS games pretty much need to have a number row. Though, I could do CAD okay without a number row (e.g. by using a numpad layer).
- majormajor 4y ago
  I wouldn't give up number row and Fkeys for more chording for two reasons. One, I already have muscle memory for existing keyboard bindings to F keys and the existing locations. Two, I have multiple devices, and I can't drop new spacebar replacements onto the mobile ones. Why optimize for just the desk? I like to move around to change things up sometimes. (I do take advantage of things when I'm at the desk by having a mechanical keyboard... but it's a kinesis with more keys than a laptop, not fewer.)
  - airstrike 4y ago
    > I wouldn't give up number row and Fkeys for more chording for two reasons. Here's a third reason, based on personal experience (n=1): chording actually creates more strain on your hand/wrists than single keystrokes
    - laserlight 4y ago
      QMK’s One Shot Keys/Layers is a solution [0]. [0] https://docs.qmk.fm/#/one_shot_keys https://docs.qmk.fm/#/one_shot_keys
bitwize 4y ago
Making your own split ergonomic woodgrain keyboard is a hacker rite of passage, like forging your own lightsaber. And you do use vim, right, or at least VSCode in vim mode? What do you need f keys for?
anikom15 4y ago
It could be a generational thing. I think people like me who started on DOS are more likely to want full keyboards, while the younger people are used to laptops and never became accustomed to using function keys. Also, when GUIs happened the function keys turned into a second class citizen as functionality was brought to the toolbar. Most kids never use F keys now because they never had to. For these younger people, the numpad and navigation keys are an impediment to reaching the mouse. For me it’s the opposite: the navigation keys is how I normally navigate (outside of vi controls) and the numpad is for numbers. The mouse is the input device of last resort.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  I think the platform one grew up on makes a difference too. People from a Mac background generally won't be as inclined towards F-keys, since Mac OS instead prefers mnemonic shortcuts (e.g. ⌘R instead of F5 for Refresh). This is the case for me. I grew up with Macs with full keyboards through the 90s and early 00s, but the Fkeys rarely got used and so they don't get much traffic from me now either.
- aliqot 4y ago
  I started on DOS and early Linux. F-keys absolutely make sense. I never incorporated home, end, page up/down into my flows. Essentially anything to the right of the arrow keys has no use in my life except SysRq and delete. The keyboards I liked best had the large backwards east asian mcnugget style enter key. These days I use an ergodox. Ortholinear is meh, but everything else about it is great.
- least 4y ago
  > For these younger people, the numpad and navigation keys are an impediment to reaching the mouse. For me it’s the opposite: the navigation keys is how I normally navigate (outside of vi controls) and the numpad is for numbers. The mouse is the input device of last resort. The mouse, the navigation cluster, and the number pad all require you to remove your hands from the home keys position in order to use them. Many of these smaller layout keyboards facilitate accessing these and the function keys under layers. I have several of these layer toggles on alpha keys, including the ones on the home row. The question then is does the chorded key offer more utility than a discrete physical one but requires you to move your arms away from home position? I think in many cases the answer is yes, it does, and it's not simply about aesthetics. It's more efficient keyboarding in most circumstances. Its weakness of course is in situations where accessing keys is time sensitive. The most obvious case where chording is strictly worse than discrete keys is gaming, where you need to be able to press various buttons quickly and often in very quick succession. In most other standard computing tasks where you're primarily typing, that isn't a meaningful consideration.
ge96 4y ago
65/68% gang I need the arrow keys
nine_k 4y ago
With a keyboard firmware like QMK, you just put everything to layers, and don't move your wrists. It's actually faster than reaching to a distant separate F-key and then.back to the home row, properly aligned.
robluxus 4y ago
My main issue with 60% are the lack of arrow keys. I haven't used F-keys for years (I do use the media keys on the F-row every once in a while) but my muscle memory needs dedicated arrow keys.
- forrestthewoods 4y ago
  I don’t need _all_ the arrow keys. Just a few. F5 for refresh. F10/F11 for step debugging. F12 for goto definition.
  - sph 4y ago
    Which arrow keys out of four you don't need?
    - maccard 4y ago
      I use 0/4 as I use vim bindings on all my editors, but the numpad and F keys are worth having a full size keyboard for.
    - forrestthewoods 4y ago
      Ha. I meant function keys.
- abudabi123 4y ago
  Would be nice to have an easy interface experience to set the F keys as radio buttons or dockbar icons, one of the F keys will allow ambidextrous arrow keys, on the left-hand "wasd" and on the right-hand "hjkl". I want to blend emacs/vi muscle memory.
- granra 4y ago
  On my 60% keyboard I have set caps lock as a fn key where holding that down and any of the WASD keys gives me arrow keys. I use my pinky to hold down the caps lock key and the others to navigate the arrow keys and I can do all of it with my left hand. Similarly I have media keys mapped on the same function layer.
zppln 4y ago
I don't understand how people can live without a numpad. I feel so much more comfortable typing numbers on one compared to using the top row.
tomjen3 4y ago
I want a keyboard with the number pad on the left side. My mouse needs to the on the right side for my hand, and the number pad on the left side means I have to move my hand a lot less to use the mouse. Given that no such keyboards exists, a moveable number pad is the second best option.
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  They do exust but they're. For some reason they are kbown as "southpaw" keyboards. Here's one that I really wanted, but I couldn't justify the outrageous price. https://switchplate.co/collections/southpaw-full-size-group-buy https://switchplate.co/collections/southpaw-full-size-group-...
aequitas 4y ago
> The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key. This depends on your platform. On macOS, almost all keyboard shortcuts are centred around the cmd/apple key next to the spacebar (where alt would be on a non-mac keyboard) and an alphanumeric key. F-keys are hardly used and if they do, you know you're likely dealing with a an app ported from Linux or Windows or which is cross-platform. It's personal preference of course, but I like my shortcuts this way as I just have to thumb the cmd key and press any other key within reach, instead of having to stretch to f-keys (cmd+q vs alt+f4) or use any of the other fingers to use the ctrl key for copy pasting (cmd+c vs ctrl+c). I use the small Apple keyboard as a daily driver on my desktop instead of the full version because it has the exact same layout as the keyboard on my laptop. Which is great as I don't have to built muscle memory for 2 layouts. Of course you are missing dedicated home/end/page keys. But the fn button along with the arrow keys make up for that (also cmd/opt + arrow keys often works better for navigating anyways as they are aware of paragraphs, line endings etc).
gabrielhidasy 4y ago
I honestly feel it's easier to type fn (caps and \ when hold in my board) + numbers for f-keys than to use dedicated ones. Now 40%, that's too little keys, a number row is important

seltzered_ 4y ago

Article kinda reminds me of 'airspace' : https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-global-minimalism-startup-gentrification https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-... . Theres something too minimal and clean about it all. FWIW, I used to have a nice remote office setup and still found myself wanting to run away from it (to a library or coffee shop) to meet a form of Marchetti's constant ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant ), and started going down the rabbit hole of https://reddit.com/r/ergomobilecomputers https://reddit.com/r/ergomobilecomputers

least 4y ago
I feel like this person is simply in a bubble that isn't a reflection of the real world, or in some cases just making asinine statements. High speed internet being homogeneous is not a bad thing. If you actually want to disconnect, ditch your devices and go out into the wilderness instead of booking your next AirBnb and going to the same trendy coffee shops. It's supremely easy to find spaces that are not designed with these sensibilities all over the world.

pj_mukh 4y ago

I would love to learn more about people who've put this much thought into mobile work stations. I move around enough that I can't invest in a permanent setup. Right now, my setup is a macbook in a roost stand, with an ipad propped up side-caring. Decent mechanical keyboard + mouse and a best effort at hiding wires. Would love to hear about other options.

pfkurtz 4y ago
If I were mostly mobile I would buy one of those 2-way screen extenders that attaches to the back of the laptop and gives you 3 monitors, and/or a large vertical touchscreen to use alongside. Trackballs are nice to have in addition to mice.
- franga2000 4y ago
  I definitely wouldn't recommend those attached screens. They're small, bulky, usually have low quality displays and none of them can be used without a kickstand, at which point you might as well get a portable monitor instead. They come in a variety of sizes, with many different features (OLED, touchscreen, speakers...) and at many different price points. I used a 17" DIY portable monitor for about two years when I didn't have a permanent workspace and the only complaints I have about using it are solved in most commercial models, I just stubbornly wanted to use my own. Just be careful with the cheap ones as they often have the same problems: poor viewing angles, no backlight adjustment, wobbly kickstand, multiple cables required....
tcoff91 4y ago
This tripodsy portable tripod standing desk is the best ive seen for portable ergonomics. I have one and its pretty awesome. The keyboard tray is a little small though so you will need a compact keyboard. https://a.co/d/8aoiewx https://a.co/d/8aoiewx
- fmajid 4y ago
  I have this inexpensive one, which is very stable: https://www.pulse-audio.co.uk/product/pls00453/ https://www.pulse-audio.co.uk/product/pls00453/ The lip around the platform (to prevent a projector from falling over the edge) may interfere with your ty[ing if you have a very thing laptop, however.

Brajeshwar 4y ago

This is Nice. Well, I started with an air of Zen[1] when the Pandemic started and now I'm in my natural habitat[2]. But one day, one day, I will have a desk setup worthy of an essay. Btw, love Arun's setup and will refer to his articles for inspiration. 1. https://unsplash.com/photos/fGkBx7hX9Ms https://unsplash.com/photos/fGkBx7hX9Ms 2. https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-desk-2022.jpg https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-desk-2022.jpg

rogerclark 4y ago

In my experience, people with super clean desks aren't consistently productive. Garbage or dirty dishes are the byproducts of computer work. If you aren't neglecting the cleanup sometimes, you probably aren't working that hard.

mpeg 4y ago
I feel the opposite way. It’s very hard for me to be productive with a messy desk, a clean desk helps me focus
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Same. If there's an empty can from a drink I just finished sitting to my left for instance, it will bother me to eventually the point of being a distraction. Plates/bowls/etc usually aren't at my desk in the first place since I have a disinclination towards eating there but on the occasion I do the first thing I do after finishing is to take the dish downstairs to put in the sink for washing later. For more general desk junk buildup I have to neaten it up every week or two or it too will become a distraction.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    It takes a bit of practice, I'll admit. Start with some basic desk clutter items like a nice cigar that you can rest on a stately ash tray, something that's hard to knock off the desk and takes a while to enjoy. Have a puff between builds, nothing too serious. Once the ash layer builds up it makes things like a ramen bowl less prone to sliding off. I can't just walk off without mentioning the importance of a tactical housecat capable of pre-cleaning the dishes so as to not attract vermin- the plus side being if said housecat is a subpar dishwasher, they're all too willing to take care of any enterprising houseflies bound for a meal.
    - CSSer 4y ago
      Are you Charles Mingus’ ghost?

pfkurtz 4y ago

Very disappointed by this. I've got mounted vertical monitors surrounding an extra wide curved monitor on a desk that has 3 distinct surfaces at different heights and a hidden shelf beneath, with a pull-out Kinesis keyboard and both a mouse and a trackball, with a large drafting desk running along one side, with a shelf above it for technical books.

platz 4y ago
he just found a way to justify his love of expensive things.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
llanowarelves 4y ago
His keyboard was by far the weakest part of this. Click the link at the top of his post ("Update:") to his newer setup, and you'll see that he upgraded the keyboard substantially to something in the ergo tier.

kumarvvr 4y ago

How does one not cringe hard when designers talk about "values" as inputs in design process?

helmholtz 4y ago
Why? Your whole being leads to a design process. Your whole being, the circumstances you grew up in determined what you value. This determines whether you like cozy spaces, or stark sterile spaces, dark or light wood, pops of colours or neutrality. If you grew up with hoarders, perhaps you were always drawn to zen minimalism. And if you nourished that seed, later in life, you wouldn't just be able to leave that need at the door when you started designing something. You'd bring your whole value system to it. You'd look for elimiation. Same with if you like symmetry, or if you like "authenticity" which is maybe just a posh word for transparency of purpose. My favourite example of this is the Windows Phone. They assumed people are digital natives, and don't mind flat rectangles which tell you just the information you need (live tiles) and no more. It started the downfall of skeumorphism and put paid to Apple's old iOS design too, but in effect, it was driven by a value system of an interface being digital-first and not needing to conform to physical reality since people are well-versed with the digital world. Perhaps designers love to talk too much about this stuff, all of it in hushed worshippy tones which can be off-putting. But there are kernels of truth in it, I think.

DeathArrow 4y ago

When it comes to work functionality and comfort are top priorities. Aesthetics, price, history and philosophical considerations are not.

least 4y ago
I'd argue that aesthetics do serve a functional role in a workspace. This is why many people put photos of their family at their desk for a very easy to understand example. It does not do something specific to your work, but it certainly serves a function to the person doing work. Beautiful objects can serve a similar purpose for a lot of people. For me it's almost always part of the consideration, though I'll concede that for items that are required for work, it needs to be able to do that well first.
- pnut 4y ago
  I personally keep a photo of my family on my desk as cue to moderate my instinct to rage quit when the latest nonsense flows downstream. "You're doing it for them" Nothing to do with aesthetics, although they are lovely.
  - least 4y ago
    I did not say that the family photo is aesthetics, just that it can serve the same purpose as nicely designed objects. Both calibrate your mind for work. The appearance of things certainly influences how you think if you're looking at them all day.
criddell 4y ago
Don Norman has studied aesthetics and productivity quite a bit and come to a different conclusion — attractive things work better.

akho 4y ago

This monitor height (and size) looks incredibly painful. The desk top material is just an incorrect choice. I don’t understand how they live with the felt pad.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
Monitor height looks about right to me, depending on where the poster’s eyes are relative to the monitor. My setup has monitors on arms at a similar height, lining up their horizontal centers with my eyeline so my head position and back are neutral.
- akho 4y ago
  Typical ergonomic guidelines are to place monitors so that your eyes are 2-3 inches below the top of the screen (looking down is much easier than looking up). The monitor in the photo is a 40”. Either they’re a giant, or their knees are well above desk level, or they have neck pain issues.
  - laserlight 4y ago
    I find the typical monitor height guideline very uncomfortable. As a developer, I usually look at the bottom edge of the screen (terminal windows, replying to online discussion). Therefore, I place my monitor higher than recommended.
theshrike79 4y ago
Yea, I don't understand how people use monitors where the lower edge is on level with their eye line. My neck hurts just looking at the pictures. But I did start in the time when we had dedicated holes for CRT monitors in desks so you could put them low enough.

Mistletoe 4y ago

> Now, with most knowledge workers going remote because of the pandemic, the desk setup has become essential. The phrase “knowledge workers” makes me physically ill.

411111111111111 4y ago
Why? Isn't it just another term such as white collar worker?
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  It implies that people that don’t sit at a desk don’t have knowledge or use knowledge or advance knowledge and nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, my life experiences say it is the opposite.
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    It never implied that to me. For white collar, soft skills are more important then domain knowledge for example and for blue collar work you'll need to be able to physically apply the knowledge. That would leave the term to mean "your soft skills and handiness are secondary to your domain knowledge"
mhd 4y ago
I rarely see it self-applied, though. It always seemed to be a more HR-centric / economist verbiage, in the same line as "human capital" and "downsizing". Whereas people actually call themselves "rockstar developers" "language ninjas" or "data scientists".
fmajid 4y ago
The term came out of management consulting (Peter Drucker IIRC) so it's not surprising it's more associated with manager happy-speak gobbeldygook than actual humans. Same with "content producer" (suggests undifferentiated glop, doesn't it?) or "thought leader".

tapanjk 4y ago

No offence, but this sounds expensive and stressful. I used to obsess over things like "good design", minimalism, perfectionism, etc. Since I stopped obsessing, I feel better: less stress, fewer expectations from my environment, better focus on what I need to accomplish (rather than by what tools) etc. Don't get me wrong, I still clean out my desk once in a couple of days, but am no longer distracted by small stuff every minute. For e.g., I love a good mechanical keyboard and bought one a few years ago and never looked back. I am happy with this keyboard and will use it until it breaks down. I love fountain pens and bought one 7 years ago, and now I don't think about pens anymore. Not that I do not care about a good pen or a good keyboard, but because I am happy with what I've got.

camillomiller 4y ago
Another thing I notice is that all these desk setups look unnaturally tidy and uninhabited. Show me your desk setup after an 8-hour workday with two overlapping deadlines, then we’ll talk.
- laserlight 4y ago
  Sterile design is a problem in general. I feel like these kinds of designs serve to be photographed than used.
- helmholtz 4y ago
  Mine looks exactly the same because I clean it. I work paperfree anyway, since I can do engineering on the PC. I ruthlessly move everything out of my visual periphery and in a storage or a cabinet away from my eyeline. Whether that makes me a deadened robot, or even marginally more effective than the next guy, is of course not entirely clear. It's just a compulsion. But the point is that people who are fastidiously tidy with their workdesks aren't mythical unicorns, but everyday people.
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    You didn’t say your computer desktop was tidy! I think there’s a place for in-person documents. Perhaps I’ll have a nice tablet at some point, but I haven’t yet replace pencil and paper for creative doodling.

thefz 4y ago

I think people like the author go through all this hassle just to post photos of their setup online and get praises from like minded users. That seems over engineered, over-thinked and downright not practical.

sph 4y ago
This is what karma-driven social media drives people to do. Stage (in pictures) something cool for likes/upvotes/thumbs up. It looks impractical, but the pictures, colours and immaculate arrangement of the desks drive us to click the red heart button. OP feels good, the reward system is strengthened. One thing is certain, none of those setup look used. They don't look like the desk of someone that has just finished designing or creating something very hard for the past few hours.
- thefz 4y ago
  Precisely. I follow some Linux, small network and homelab subreddits and the same plague has taken over these places too. Just picture after picture of a fresh install or a machine or a perfectly cable-managed home switch with no content whatosever.
- maccard 4y ago
  > One thing is certain, none of those setup look used. They don't look like the desk of someone that has just finished designing or creating something very hard for the past few hours. If you share a photo of your bedroom with someone for whatever reason do you share an unmade bed to show how it looks after you've slept?
- fmajid 4y ago
  Deskporn. Edit: I just googled it, and sure enough, it already exists: https://www.reddit.com/r/DeskPorn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DeskPorn/ Rule 34 strikes again! By that token, mine must be some sort of unspeakablly deviant corner: https://majid.info/office/ https://majid.info/office/
criddell 4y ago
I think you might be overthinking this. People enjoy what they enjoy. This person gets a lot of joy making a space they like to spend time in. There are car buffs, cycling fanatics, outdoorsmen, musicians, woodworkers, and all kinds of other people who put similar amounts of thought into their gear and space.

t00 4y ago

Slightly off topic thought: article mentions carrot on which OP works. I am so grateful to live in Europe where fertility services are just there...

zol 4y ago
It's surprising they're not free or mandated as part of health care in the US given our falling birth rates and xenophobic fear of immigration.

jemmyw 4y ago

It was an interesting read. Didn't feel that this person really followed their own rules about pre-owned. It wouldn't be for me, it feels like a very stark style. I got a really nice large wooden desk for cheap from a store in the US when I lived there, it was <50% retail price because of some bad surface scratches. Here in NZ wooden furniture is stupidly expensive. I've just finished, nearly 10 years later, resurfacing it. Plenty of space for crap on top, plus three drawers to hide cables, hankies etc. I've got one of those Aeron chairs. It was my chair at work years ago and then through the company being bought out, remote working and bad record keeping it ended up being mine. The most important thing for me about a working area is that I can have all my stuff close by. Guitar on one side so I can take a music break from work. I usually have a painting on the go too as another rest from work hobby, so I've got a crappy easel on the other side. It's not the cleanest area, but it's the first time in my adult life that I've had a space just for myself.

jupp0r 4y ago

Please get a decent microphone if you don't want to wear a head set. Most room mics are just unbearable on Zoom. The Logitech one built into the webcam certainly is.

skydhash 4y ago
And they’re cheap. I bought a usb mic after I read some post about the importance of audiovisuals for video meetings, and it’s good enough to actually record songs. I put it on a stand for ergonomics and the whole thing cost less than 50 USD.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

That's a desk that no-one works at.

criddell 4y ago
Is it that hard to imagine that they tidied up before taking a photo?

mhd 4y ago

And here I am with my 23" acrylic Cinema Display and yellow-tinged original Natural Keyboard…

amadeuspagel 4y ago

"For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart." - Morton Feldman

sunjester 4y ago

As someone who had the pleasure of pushing devs around from time to time (the boss..) this is displeasing. More work. less desk setup.

theCrowing 4y ago
Are you peter gregory?

Bendy 4y ago

Reading this article made me want to listen to Eyeliner’s Larp of Luxury again. My setup is my laptop on an Ikea Björkåsen (featuring cupholder with nifty notch for the mug handle) and my arse on a Poäng. If that’s not minimal I don’t know what is.

rawoke083600 4y ago

We must never forget there was a time our great and successful (otherwise we wont be here) ancestors had todo their dailygrind and office'ing in a cave with no rgb backlight or standing desk !

Avlin67 4y ago

oh boy… just get 2 or 4 4K 120 HDR oled monitors and proper mechanical key board and use a thick proper plywood base plate so that nothing moves.

rufus_foreman 4y ago

He has a felt desk mat that "reduces the visual clutter that the peripherals would otherwise create on the bare desk surface". Also, "The choice of computer, in this case, isn’t that important." Definitely has different priorities than I do.