I’m mainly curious about software developers here, or anyone else whose computer is somewhat central to their life, be it professional or hobbyist.
I only have two monitors—one directly in front of me, and another to the right of it, angled toward me. For web development, I keep my editor on the main screen, and anything auxiliary (be that a dev build, a video, StackOverflow, etc.) on the side screen.
I wouldn’t mind a third monitor, and if I had one, I’d definitely use it for log/output, since currently it’s a floating window that I shuffle around however necessary. It could be smaller than the other two, and I might even turn it vertical so I could split the screen between output and a terminal, configuring a AutoHotKey script to focus the terminal.
What about y’all?
[ cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13864053 ]
Backend dev. I have an ultrawide (like two monitors in one).
Sometimes I need to test the full stack and need a lot (8+) terminals. I try to tile them all on a separate virtual desktop.
Most commonly though, I center my main application and can have two smaller, peripheral applications, one on each side.
When doing full stack, I need a browser, IDE and two terminals, tiled to give more space for the browser.
I’m a FE and A11y focused SWE
Laptop screen: IDE / main browser
Main monitor: terminal with dev server, and browser to localhost
I wish I could have a small, third monitor for just the terminal but my Mac struggles with one extra monitor. I also tend to work at 150% zoom because of terrible eyesight, so I don’t actually have that much screen real estate.
Three monitors here. Primary and secondary pretty much exactly like you. Tertiary is a cheap portable one, 15", 1080p, that I’ve mounted above the secondary slightly angled downward and on which I have my communication apps pinned, as well as a full screen
btop.I’ve wanted the overhead comms display off and on for a while now. Two screens for input/output work, then the overhead screen for discord/hangouts/teams/email status. I don’t need the overhead one all the time, but some days it would be insanely useful when things are buzzing in the group.
Oh, neat! Yeah, I think I’ve seriously talked myself into getting a small third monitor. Using it for communication apps is a good idea, and I can definitely see having that when I’m just relaxing, or if I’m collaborating. Thanks for your response!
Two monitors. One is 1440p and mainly for games and other tasks, while the other one is a really old and kinda shitty 1080p monitor i use while im doing stuff on the better monitor. I usually watch youtube or have a discord voice call open, sometimes i use it to have a tutorial or wiki page open like that i dont always have to alt tab and see the page again. Its really useful and i cant stand using a single monitor anymore haha. Thankfully im ok using the steam deck still
Web developer, couldn’t go without three monitors. Just three 1080p panels. Center monitor has the code editor, right has the browser, and left has the ticket or designs or the music player or Slack.
I spend a lot of time in zoom meetings. One monitor is the zoom sesh, one is the excel file or whatever I’m working on or reading data off of or taking notes on, third is on rotation but frequently a chat or email window so I can be reaching out to give info or ask for info based on what I’m hearing in the videoconference.
Having only two monitors would be ok, slightly less efficient to be moving the working files and communication apps around. One monitor would be very inefficient, I wouldn’t be able to to keep the videoconf content up while working to react to it.
I’m not a programmer, in case you couldn’t tell.
2+ 1 with chatGPT
Yeah, no, not putting company private information into servers the company doesn’t control. My industry is tightly regulated, but even outside mine I don’t understand who is able to use these tools for work. Healthcare? Financial? Insurance? Engineering design? Any sort of company with private information? How are y’all throwing this information out into the world and not getting fired, fined, or imprisoned?
Yes, but yes.
“What does x mean in the context of y?”
“Make me a bash script that sends my ssh public key to the server ips I list in args >4”
“draw me a mermaid diagram with 4 nodes, 1 with manual, next with automated, semi automated and lastly cicd”
"write me a go function that ping’s these ips at a rate of 100 times per second and the json I reference with flag “–input”
If you cannot find a way to do parts of your job without giving up sensitive ip, I guess that’s bad luck.
Difference between trusting a known individual and company-wide policies that have to account for new people, dumb people, honest mistakes.
Do I know not to put company sensitive info into servers out of our control? Yes. Can the company trust that every employee knows that? Lol, no. Therefore, there’s blanket policies against using tools that require giving up ownership of data to god-knows-who.
It’s wild to me any company of decent size isn’t locking this shit down. We’ll get our own internal generative AI tools where we control all the data before too long, or an enterprise service with specific data controls that comply with all the requirements of heavily regulated international industry.
“Trust” only works in a very small circle. Corporation-wide, it’s no longer a question of if someone puts no-no data into ChatGPT, it’s a question of when and what’s the damage.
FYI you can host your own version also eg azure open Ai, or use some open models like mistral and llama.
Corporate overlords say “self host? Lol, no.”
I have 5 if you count the one on my server.
One 1440p, 3 1080s- one in a vertical orientation for reading through lengthy config files. An additional 1080p that is used for specific servers, so I’m not sure if that counts since it’s technically a different machine ?
Use case varies drastically but, left to right:
Monitor 1 on the left is typically used for for videos throughout my work day, usually some Indian guy explaining a very technical concept in fractured English in a notepad document- that’s how you know you’re in deeeeep
Monitor 2 is the 1440 and it’s the main event so to speak. Whatever I’m working on the most at that moment goes onto that monitor.
Monitor 3 is the vertical monitor and used mostly for comms separated into 2-3 sections. Video calls on top, work chat underneath that. Config files opened in notepad++ when not actively using the comms.
Monitor 4 is technically on a different machine as well but it stays on my desk and looks like a normal part of the setup. I use mouse without borders to use my keyboard across both systems.
Monitor 5 is attached to an Dell Poweredge that I use as a proxmox host, which itself is used to host a pi-hole, home assistant, graylog, an truenas instance running plex. The truenas thing will probably go away and I’ll run the plex server directly on a machine with more graphical capability. On its other input is an old datto that doesn’t really do much yet.
Note: not a software dev, but a network engineer
Interesting. I mean, if it’s practical for the usage of your computer, then I would say it counts. What kind of information do you have displayed for your server? Just metadata, or logs?
Kinda varies. That particular monitor is pretty multi purpose, it has a server on the hdmi, a server on the vga, and a little dell tower that gets used as a demo machine/sacrificial lamb depending on the experiment. Day to day I’d say that’s the default.
For the servers it’s just console access for convenience. They mostly run headless.
Really, the more monitors the better as far as I’m concerned. For my home desktop I just have an ultra widescreen and it’s basically fine for most stuff as I functionally treat it like two monitors when doing anything outside of a game - I’d still love a second though, especially for while gaming as I miss having a wiki or whatever up in view.
For work we provide everyone with a laptop and two monitors, so that’s three screens. Even the least technical of our staff love it and would hate to go back to having less screens. It’s so helpful having multiple websites/spreadsheets/whatever open at once when working on anything involving comparing information.
Not a software dev but tech is central to my life.
3 monitors for normal use
1 - personal streaming, video meetings
2 - remote business desktop access, main personal browsing window
3 - online chat presence window, personal email client, other
3 monitor gaming
3 monitors for racing simulators and any games that support it (which make sense)
Single monitor gaming
1 - Game related content on left 2 - Game window in center 3 - Game related social media or streaming
3 monitor home labbing
1 machine or app per monitor Triple monitor stare and compare windows GUI / CLI / Monitoring system interface
I didn’t realize how extensively I used my monitors until this exercise. Feel better about the spend and space tax related to it.
The old data I have from the industrial engineering work was that going from one to two monitors was a 40% productivity speed up, then from two to three was about a 5% speedup, then three to four was a productivity loss.
Those numbers were on general workloads, not for specialists. It was also with UI design from 20 years ago, and the way interfaces work now the numbers are likely different.
Personally, I immediately try to get a second monitor because having only one means I lose a lot of focus and mental time just swapping the active on screen windows, but a rarely seek out a third, though a third is nice for overflow tools (chat, docs, music) to have a third screen.
I came in here late, but I just wanted to say I have three monitors, and I often use a music stand to hold up a book where my 4th monitor would be. Really helpful when your technical manual is a physical document but you’re doing work on a computer. It’s a “monitor” by any other name, and lines up with the rest of my monitors in a neat little row.
I have 2 monitors. My primary is ultra wide for gaming and the secondary is discord, Spotify, etc. so I can view messages and stuff without leaving my full screen game.
For work? I just use my Mac monitor like a neanderthal. Idk why but I don’t really find multiple monitors helps me work faster.
I had two but switched to one 30 inch. I almost never looked at the other monitor. :)
I used to swear by two monitors, but switched to a single ultrawide and it’s so much nicer. No bevels in the middle and therefore freedom to set up windows in whatever configuration you like. Good tiling window manager is a must though.
What do you use for tiling? I’ve been curious about this setup, but the software setup sounds like a pain compared to 2 monitors.
If you’re on windows, display fusion was great for this. Since I switched to Linux, KDE just natively does everything I needed display fusion to do. Changed some key binds to match what I was already used to and was off to the races.
Have you played with PowerToys on Windows? It has some extra tools for playing with window tiling
I have not. From a quick web search, it looks like “Fancy Zones” might do what is needed without having to buy anything extra.
First screen for gaming and watching videos (landscape)
Second screen (portrait) Termal and reading documentation
