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 ]
Scientist here, a lot of my job is writing texts with references to other literature of the field, or reviewing such texts (or PowerPoints). Main screen has the document open, the other is actually in portrait format and has gazillions of open pdfs on it that are relevant to whatever I’m working on. I had to get this setup for working from home because productivity dropped immensely with only one screen.
I have a central monitor in landscape orientation which is where my IDE lives. Then a monitor on the left in portrait, which has the bottom quarter or so dedicated to work chat, music controls, and the browser developer window, then the rest of it is a web browser for documentation. On the right is my laptop screen, which is used for more documentation and watching TV shows while I work
What is a rainbow computer?
I presumed he meant Apple because of the logo. But maybe I am very old…
For work, it’s usually IDE on the right (my larger screen) and a live build of the thing I’m working with on the left (a laptop screen). Though it varies a lot throughout the day. Primary screen gets the app that needs most scrutiny, small screen gets auxilliary things like passive communication apps or reference materials.
For home use, where I have two monitors of equal size, it’s usually Discord on one screen and a web browser on the other. Comms on the left and active task on the right.
I don’t see a use case in my workflow for a third screen, especially not one that is a weird size or is in portrait orientation. But if one was simply bestowed upon me, I’m sure I’d find something to do with it sooner or later. There was a time where I though two monitors was overrated, I’m sure I can adapt my opinion again for 3+.
I do fiber optic tech support
Left monitor is for account software (includes customer info, ticket manager, etc)
Middle monitor is email, browser (most of our management tools are browser based), and putty
Right monitor is ms teams, notepads++, and a softphone app
Loads of data sciency stuff - one monitor for normal text editing/terminal work, another for accessing remote environments, and a third for a combo of work comms and music.
When not sciencing, I won’t lie, there’s a lot of Path of Exile with PoB on one screen and a podcast on the third.
Code, editors, terminal, and most browser tabs on the right…
Calendar, Slack, some more browser windows on the left, sometimes some debugging tools.
Third smaller screen off to the side for media if I want to throw on something in the background.
I’m in IT/remote administration and have 3 monitors. The left is my main screen and where ticketing/remote windows live, middle screen is email/chats/research, and the right screen is a smaller, portrait oriented monitor for reading long documents (or trying to follow my own code) or I’ll throw my security camera feed and YouTube on that one to have visible out of the corner of my eye.
Two monitors is the absolute minimum, but I think three can be very useful.
On one, I have reference materials, on one I have code, and on one I have the application I’m developing. I think it makes for a pretty good workflow.
Two screens and a laptop screen, could find use for more. I find myself shuffling things around depending on what I need, but most commonly I have the left screen split between notepad++ on one side for any notes keeping, and either documentation I’m reading, documentation I’m writing, a browser I’m using, or something such. Whenever I need to compare text files, notepad++ gets to take the whole screen.
On the middle screen I usually have the remote desktop or VM I’m working on at the time.
Right (laptop screen) is usually reserved for Outlook and Teams.
- Left (vertical) - Notesnook (or whichever knowledge management system I’m on at that particular moment), Signal, and Slack all tiled so I can see them all together.
- Middle (horizontal) - IDE.
- Right (vertical) - Browser.
This works well, but I’d enjoy another monitor for Spotify or, more likely, so I could make all the terminal, debugger, run, database, etc from my IDE full-blown windows on the fourth monitor.
- Left (horizontal) - communicators, btop, Spotify.
- Middle (horizontal) - browser with GitLab, terminals and editors, main development in general.
- Right (vertical) - browser for googling and docs, terminals for tests / logs / whatever I want to see at the same time as the editor, Obsidian for notes.
Anything less than that will completely ruin my workflow. I’m even trying to come up with a feasible way to fit a fourth one.
- Left (wide screen): Teams and Jira
- Center (Ultra wide screen): IDE, file browser and other main stuff
- Right (portrait): Terminal and ocational documents
Tilling WM is all I need baby
My super ultrawide with paperWM is just another level of productivity
fr. give me a dynamic tiling WM and my life will be complete, i can work productively on any machine.
I have three. The third doesn’t really boost my productivity much, I have it vertical just to show my file browser because I open and switch through different files quite a lot. The other two are to show the actual files I’m working in or comparing.
