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 ]

  • PersonalDevKit@aussie.zone
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    9 months ago

    Three screens billed as “business expense” actually used as a sim racing rig.

    But you will end up filling any screen space you have. When coding I very quickly fill out the space, to see files and folders I am intereacting with, communication apps, websites, IDE, ticket screen. Some days I wish I had 4.

  • LockheedTheDragon@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Three monitors for work and sometimes wish for a 4th. I’m doing research and pulling info from various documents into one document with commentary. A 4th would be nice so I could have email and chat on it. I’ve missed people asking me questions because I had documents in front of the chat and missed the pop-up. Sometimes you need 5 programes and then multiple documents open to understand what going on to explain it and then have to copy and paste from various documents.

    For personal I liked it when I had 4 monitors. Main for web browsing and one for chats. The other two, one for playing video or music and the other to drag stuff to. The other two really shined when I would do photo editing or writing. Spreading things out over 3 monitors made things easier. Right now with my living situation I’m pretty much on a laptop so one monitor. Really makes photo editing not as fun and writing when I need to keep pulling up references stuff outright frustrating at times. I actually have more than 4 monitors at home since I kept picking them up at thrift stores, (DVI into USB adapters are nice) but didn’t find any real benefit to more than 4. But once everything settles I plan on getting my 4 monitors setup back and a Linux station for certain projects with 2 monitors and Raspberry Pi with 1 monitor.

  • Gina Häußge@discuss.tchncs.de
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    9 months ago

    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.

    • Longpork3@lemmy.nz
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      8 months ago

      Haha, ditto. I’ve got the 34inch 4:3 for tasks like cad and image stuff, then next to it the 34inch ultramodern which I use for spreadsheets or multi-pane stuff, then my extra monitor up that lives up at a weird angle is my at-a-glance home for slack, btop, nvtop and any running scripts I want to keep an eye on.

    • Mesa@programming.devOP
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      9 months ago

      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!

  • southernbrewer@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I have two. Early career I found the second one absolutely improved my productivity - perhaps by 50% or more - as it helped me multitask really effectively.

    Now, later in my career I have had kids for a while. My multitasking went out the window when I had kids - I find it hard to juggle more than one or maybe two things I’m working on at a time. I suspect this was due to poor sleep - parents never seem to really catch up to sleeping full nights like before kids. Instead of multitasking on lots of small things I transitioned to more in-depth work where I can focus for longer periods on a single thing.

    Now, I think having a second monitor is still useful but I can function fine without it. It’s maybe a 10% boost if that.

  • JakenVeina@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    For work, I have 2 monitors, and my docked laptop. The main two monitors are hugely beneficial for software development, as I can reference design docs or requirements while writing code, or I can have the debugger running on one screen, while the app runs on the other.

    The laptop screen is where Teams and Outlook sit, so I can glance over at messages from the team, and maybe respond, without having to swap around any of my workspace.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 months ago

      Yeah this is me. I love this set up.

      I dabble in development but not all day. I’m an accountant. My laptop monitor is usually music, chats, video calls. The other two are just whatever I’m working on emails, spreadsheets, browser based applications. I would absolutely miss having the third monitor.

      Presently my daily driver is a Lenovo t490s. The laptop monitor is HD but I don’t think it can support more than 1920 on the monitors on the dock. I’d love to move up to all HD one day. That would be amazing. I’m near sighted so smaller-than-usual text is quite comfortable. having HD would give me so much more usable space within my field of view.

  • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    I have been using 2-3 monitors for more than 20 years now it’s the best.

    I use 3 monitors at work, the left one is for outlook and teams, the middle one is the main development monitor, the right one is for browsers chrome/edge for work related sites, FF for surfing.

    • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Pretty much exactly the same for my work setup except flip left and right .

      I can’t effectively use 3 for personal stuff, one monitor at work pretty much exclusively is for teams and outlook

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      Three monitors at work, one at home… my work ones are 1080p, my home monitor is 1440/165

      …I prefer my home monitor for working, even beyond the WFH perks. I have no idea why. I wish my company would gimme a high rez+refresh screen.

  • DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    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.

  • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago
    • Outlook (tasks, inbox, and calendar) on the left screen (sometimes vertical)
    • Main work window on the right screen.
    • Underneath is my laptop screen with Teams and Notepad++.

    Remove 1 screen = reduce my productivity by maybe 20%.

    Remove one more screen = reduce by at least another 40%.

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
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    9 months ago

    At my past job every one in the IT team I was part of had three monitors, it was great when needed, but for the most part I was doing fine with two.

    It was not uncommon to need one monitor for the work order, one monitor where I had the tool to work with and one to have the documentation of the tool.

    At my current job I have two monitors, its fine.

  • Blaster M@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    2 monitors.

    Primary is for what I’m focusing on. Secondary is for things I need to look at while the primary is up.

  • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I’m an engineer (a non-IT engineer) and have 4. There is so much ensuring consistency between drawings and documents. I’d like 5 (including the inbuilt one) but graphics card on my high performance company laptop says no.

    At least one for file explorer, then other three could be pdf editor, or word, or excel, or internet browser.

    I regularly have 4 drawings open, plus another reference, plus windows explorer for file management.

    It’s never enough. I could totally do with more than 4 screens, I’m already squeezing multiple drawings onto one monitor.

  • Bosht@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I do ‘light’ software development for a SAAS. I use a single ultra wide. It has PiP settings so I can display my personal if I’d like while working, or have everything displayed on the work side as a triple window or dual window setup. The flexibility is great but overall ultra wides are still niche and a general pain in the ass. Good luck getting any game to run more than 90fps when you’re pushing a 5k resolution and 240 refresh.

  • Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de
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    8 months ago

    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.

  • morgan423@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I have two monitors but I do all my work on one the other is completely separate. Plays YouTube all day so that I have background noise to work with.