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 ]

  • @[email protected]
    7•3 months ago

    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

    • @MesaOP
      1•3 months ago

      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?

      Edit: posted before I could see your edit. But yeah, definitely checks out. I think I would get so distracted by that, but at most I really only need to be paying close attention to changes in three places at a time, at which point I’ve got to do some window-focus-fu with PowerToys. Cool answer!

      • @[email protected]
        4•3 months ago

        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.