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A lot of those workspaces consist of a laptop (often 13inch macbook) on a desk. Laptop screens, on desks, are at the wrong height for ergonomics - you shouldnt
by feral 14y ago
A lot of those workspaces consist of a laptop (often 13inch macbook) on a desk.
Laptop screens, on desks, are at the wrong height for ergonomics - you shouldnt have to look down at the screen all day.
People should be using large dedicated monitors, which are at the right height, and dedicated input peripherals (e.g. keyboard+mouse). Ergonomic, and efficient.
A nice 27inch IPS display is now very cheap; I do not understand professional hackers working just off a laptop.
- ajross 14y agoI use a 15.6" laptop on a stand, with the top of the screen right at eye height. It works great, and has the advantage of not forcing me to recalibrate my eyes and view distance every time I go home. But yes, staring down at the thing would be awful.
- rhizome 14y agoNot to mention that 22-24" is perfectly fine, especially in a hackerspace that would otherwise cheap out by supplying only bad chairs and card tables.
- jakeonthemove 14y agoTwo 22-24" are actually more flexible than a single 27", and the price is about the same...
- gruseom 14y agoI do not understand professional hackers working just off a laptop. Ability to take my work wherever I want with absolutely zero context switch.
- dredmorbius 14y agoSad but true. State retention/replication is among the biggest hassles of my multiple computing environments. OTOH, it's also a pretty persuasive argument to leave work at work at the end of the day.
- jsilence 14y agossh dev tmux attach workon project
- batista 14y agoWe don't all work solely in the command line which makes the advice worthless.
- tverlinden 14y agoOnly some people work solely in the command line, therefore that advice is worthless? I don't follow your logic here.
- dredmorbius 14y agoMy shell work isn't the issue. Or rather in isolation it's not. I'll run upwards of 40-50 shell sessions (on multiple hosts, with screen sessions on many of them). The net state of all of those sessions, including spatial relations between shells and color coordination (helpful for state recognition) is the hard thing to replace. Note: it's not that I carefully choose the colors of all shells, but I do have a couple of scripts that will kick out terminals in either lighter or darker shades (lighter == remote terminals, darker == local) to indicate stuff whose state I want to specifically register. Full desktop sessions and browser state are the big ones. I might be able to look at NX or another remote desktop solution, but those would be at best poor substitutes.
- sneak 14y agoDepends on the work, but I've found that all my dotfiles (including .ssh and .screenrc and .vimrc) linked into a directory on Dropbox, as well as my Development directory (containing all my local copies of git repos) goes a long way toward achieving this. I _really_ didn't want to build a computer, and the iMac is _substantially_ faster than the equivalent-costing MBP (and also frees me up to travel with an Air). It's a useful tradeoff, I think.
- gruseom 14y agoDropbox probably does take care of the biggest issues. But I really do mean absolutely zero. The reason I quit using an external monitor is that I'd organize my windows differently on it and then have trouble readjusting to the laptop. Especially when lines of code started wrapping that didn't wrap when I wrote them!
- mpdaugherty 14y agoI actually started writing shorter lines of code once I got my large external monitor. I've found it's really convenient to set my editor to take up 50% of the screen vertically and have either a command line or browser on the other half of the screen (and reference windows on the laptop screen). In this setup, the editor is actually slightly narrower and taller than when full-screen on my laptop. Switching between screen sizes really made me realize the importance of making sure all my code breaks at column 80, which makes it easier to read in terminals, on other people's screens, etc. as well. Good practice, I think.
- eternauta3k 14y agoI try to avoid line wrapping, but SQL statements usually force me to have some >80 char lines.
- porkbird 14y agoI used to have a problem with readjusting window sizes and positions between the laptop and my 24" display until I discovered full-screen apps in the recent OS X. Now I just run the text editor full-scren on both
- drhowarddrfine 14y agoYou don't need a laptop as your main dev computer to do that. Especially with *nix/BSD where you can ssh, and even port forward, all your applications from your main box through your notebook.
- swah 14y agoYeah, I only took Hanselman seriously: http://coderwall.com/p/fgtlba http://coderwall.com/p/fgtlba No pointing showing me a IKEA table, a fern and an MBA.
- Cd00d 14y agoBut why does he have an HDTV for Netflix at his workstation? It does seem to be the best setup for working before that's mentioned, and afterword it looks a lot like goof-off central.
- Karunamon 14y agoSometimes you need a swap that mental context out for a while and then revisit it, especially when you get stuck. Netflix would be a good match for this, even if it's something semi-relevant like TED talks.
- shanselman 14y agoYa, it's also good for LiveMeetings that I'm not really listening to.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- sukuriant 14y agoAlso, I personally work better when I can give a bit of my brain something else to think about so it shuts up and I can get real work done. That's why I listen to music; and, that's why during my late nights in grad school, I played a movie over and over again in the background. "How to Train Your Dragon" was the preferred feature, by the way.
- jff 14y agoI typically used "Wizard People, Dear Reader" for this task.
- 14y ago
- cgag 14y agoDo you have a recommendation for a nice cheap IPS? I'm in the market for a monitor, I'd be interested to see what other developers recommend.
- wjbr 14y agoRPS had a nice write up in Feb. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/22/hard-choices-the-only-4-monitors-you-should-buy/ http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/22/hard-choices-the-...
- spatular 14y agoDell U2711 is quite nice, good IPS and anti-glare, but it's not cheap (800-1000 USD). But in my case I consider that money well spent. At a recent Slashdot discussion a lot of people mentioned Yamasaki Catleap, it could be shipped from Korea where it's supposedly produced from 27'' panels rejected by Apple, but still usable. And it costs 340-400 USD with shipping. As for the topic, it's really puzzling how people can use just laptops as their main work machines for code development. Right now I have about 6Mpixels at 100dpi of screen estate and I guess I could make use of another 4Mpixels. Good keyboard is also a must.
- nfriedly 14y agoI have a HP ZR24w that I've been super-happy with. I had some trouble with the stand and HP overnighted me a new one for free. I recall it getting good reviews on AnandTech although I can't seem to find the link now.
- mgcross 14y agoI have an HP zr2740w (27", 2560x1440), just under $700. Nice screen, but it's pretty bare-bones. No HDMI or analog inputs (just displayport and DVI-D); no OSD (seriously - none!) and a pretty cheap stand. Overall, the extras in the Dell are probably worth the additional cost. If you want really cheap, LG has some 23" (1920x1080) IPS panels for right around $200.
- lazerwalker 14y agoThe Dell Ultrasharps are a great value for the price. I picked up a refurb 24" for around $350 a few years ago, and it's served me very well.
- Tooluka 14y agoMy back hurts just to look at those "notebook workspaces" :( . I've worked on 10" netbook 6 hours a day for a year, on 15" notebook for two years. It is just soo bad for eyes, hands, back. Ugh...
- doc4t 14y agoI'm currently experimenting with a 6 x 24'' setup. I used to have just 3 which fits most of my needs but I always wanted to try have it felt with even more. I does require some odd head movement once in a while though