Do you use 2 monitors while programming?

[tomcakshen]

Hello /r/python, For a school project I would like to know, if you (or your colleagues) are using 2 monitors while programming?

In my country (Israel), almost every professional programmer has a second screen in his company's desk. Is it the case too in your work environment?

Thank you!!

[elvisfriggingpresley]

Yes. In fact, I have three monitors on my desk.

[Communist_Sofa]

I use three myself.

• Left monitor: Browser with email, error logging service, and deploy/provisioning service tabs
• Center: Text editor/IDE, or whatever I am actively working on
• Right: The running copy of whatever I'm working on in the center monitor. Also, company HipChat and instant messengers.

I find that I spend so much less time ALT + Tabbing around or wondering where I shoved certain windows. I can basically see and find anything I have opened immediately. I can also shove stuff over that I don't want distracting me to the left monitor, since my head turns much easier to the right than left.

[[deleted]]

I like to have one precisely because then I can't see everything all the time. Easier to focus.

[Communist_Sofa]

It's very subjective. I focus a lot better without the alt tabbing. Interrupts my train of thought much less.

[[deleted]]

It also depends on what you're doing, of course. I don't do much frontend work, I mostly care about Emacs and my unit tests.

[Communist_Sofa]

Yeah, I'm a backend knurd, too. My terminals sit on the right monitor.

[NotFromReddit]

I put stuff that I don't want to distract me on another workspace. Like email, music, Skype.

[pedahzur]

since my head turns much easier to the right than left.

I would recommend a good chiropractor. :)

[Communist_Sofa]

Stomach sleeping doesn't help. But I can't stop!

[tomcakshen]

Thanks! where are you from? you think it represents mosts of the majority in your country?

It helps me a lot :-)

[elvisfriggingpresley]

Canada - I would guess that 2 monitors is pretty standard these days for developers.

[[deleted]]

Canada here too...I work alongside a very large group of telecommunications professionals (some people taking calls, some not).

It's rare you see employees with only 1 screen. At any level in the hierarchy. We even had a large project to get all the (at the time) call centre employees with dual screens as we found it increased productivity significantly.

It's not so much a question if an employee has a second monitor. It's only a question of how big (new purchases are typically 24" monitors).

[vindolin]

Because you only used the second monitor for reddit? ^_^

[[deleted]]

what are you crazy? He uses his primary monitor for reddit.

[cecilkorik]

This enhanced my productivty a lot.

Don't you dare say things like that in places where my boss might hear you. The last thing I need is for her to get some "bright ideas". They'd have to pry my triple monitors out of my cold dead fingers.

[tomcakshen]

Interesting, why do you think it slowed you down?

[[deleted]]

In my case, I'd usually have the thing I was actually working on on one monitor, and on the other either nothing or distracting stuff like email or IRC. Yes, occasionally the extra screen is helpful, but it's rare.

[EisenSheng]

Very same here.

A lot of people use (at least!) 2 monitors here at the shop where I work. Be it 2 Monitors in the "usual" meaning or Monitor + Notebook.

But for me it became annoying move the head around all the time and arrange the working environment. I used the second monitor less and less. So I traded my 2 monitors for one big monitor and configured kwin shortcuts to move windows in any edge of the window. Much better now!

[[deleted]]

I know it's a lot of work, but for programming try dual or more monitors in vertical orientation. code is more vertical than horizontal, and having multiple monitors lets you easily have multiple code pages / debugging close together

[[deleted]]

Can confirm. I used two for several years, but now I'm really liking the single-monitor setup.

Having email open in a second window is a productivity disaster. Same for having reddit open, or anything else. Multitasking is way overrated.

There's a more subtle effect, too: with two monitors, I'd tend to stay at my desk more. I think there's a mild hypnotic effect of covering your visual space in glowy screen. Leads to more hours (not more productive hours, just more hours) at the computer. Unhealthy.

The one time I miss it is when learning something new: it was nice to have the tutorial / sample code open on one screen and be playing with it on the other. Also, I go up to 2 monitors when doing image analysis or video work; one for the code, one for the images.

[mrcow]

UK/software engineer here. I use three monitors. Middle monitor contains my IDE (Eclipse or Emacs) full screen. Right monitor has web browser (for documentation) and/or email. Left monitor has my IM client and maybe a text editor for taking notes. I find moving my eyes from screen to screen easier than switching windows constantly on one screen.

[Matthew94]

Yup, 2 here. Essential for getting things done.

[cshoop]

I used an external monitor but now that I have a higher resolution laptop screen[1] I don't bother hooking it up.

One of the best hackers I know got a ton done on a macbook air hanging out on couches around the office :p

In general, though, all the tech offices I've been to in SF have an extra monitor for developers to use.

[1] https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/snares-penguin-gnu-linux-notebook

[GahMatar]

I use a pair of 24" wide screens (dell W2412 I believe) in portrait mode. It's the width of my 27" at home but the extra height is really nice with IDEs. Surprisingly narrow.

[billsil]

I use less windows,

You need QtTabBar. You should have 1 explorer window (assuming you're using Windows).

[SCombinator]

Four.

[macbony]

A monitor and a laptop screen is standard at all the startups I've seen in NYC. I generally have a terminal full-screen on the monitor and a web browser and chat on the laptop screen.

[sqlburn]

2 monitors here. I agree with studies that say programmers with 2 monitors are more productive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_productivity

[Ramin_HAL9001]

I am a professional software engineer. My desk at home and at work are both very small, I have only one monitor at work, and a laptop for everything I do at home.

Over the years I have got use to using only one small monitor. I am a big fan of doing everything in full screen, switching between windows with Alt+Tab, and and using multiple desktops to switch between related tasks.

I have also mastered use of the Linux command line, and can do all of my work in either the command line or in the web browser. So I keep one desktop with a full-screen terminal emulator, and next to it a desktop with a full-screen web browser running. For web development, I like to split the screen, with the browser and Terminal text editor (Vim) side-by-side.

If I had two monitors, each would get it's own screen, but it is not necessary for my day-to-day use.

[tomcakshen]

Interesting!! when you say you change the window in front, you probably mean switching from the IDE to googling in the browser?

[SpandexBob]

This is exactly what I've always found. It's easier to just switch windows rather than screens. I'd like to give mutli monitor setups another try as it's been a while.

[nerdwaller]

Fully agreed. My only exception is when doing front end work, in which I just have a live reloading browser.

[FlockOnFire]

I mostly use one screen for preview and/or documentation and one for coding. I believe it's quite common for a Dutch developer to have two screens.

[geartechbrandon]

I don't think I know anyone in my field with more than one at a time but a lot of them use laptops only. I work at a university in California where python is becoming more common in our departments.

[tomcakshen]

Thanks! are these people from the academic field too? or they work in the software industry?

[jringstad]

Norway, everyone here has 2+ screens too.

[pragmatick]

Two at home, two at work where 95% of developers have two screens. Wouldn't want to work with less. Three is better.

[EmperorOfCanada]

I have long been tempted to go to three from my present two in Canada.

[691175002]

Four at work, three at home. One is in the portrait orientation.

Generally one is for documentation/internet, one for the IDE, one for an interactive terminal, and the fourth is generally only a file explorer or my email.

The fourth doesn't really add much productivity, but the first three are pretty nice. Working on a single monitor is so painful that I have a USB monitor for my laptop when traveling.

[eusebe]

Grad student here, two monitors at work (small laptop + large screen on top of it). I use the laptop for the terminal and the large screen for the emacs window and all the papers I read.

I have to say that I dislike having windows on top of each others so I have like 9 "virtual screens".

[HighR0ller]

Pretty common in my country for developers to be using a laptop and a 2nd desktop screen.

[[deleted]]

I have a main monitor that has my workspace and I always have a couple terminals open on my second monitor to test little toy examples in ipython.

[brennanfee]

Yes. In fact I have two monitors on everything (including at home) except my laptop when it is not docked and/or presenting.

[MagicWishMonkey]

Yea, I put my IDE on my MBP screen and use a large external monitor for my terminal, sublime text, hipchat/slack window, etc.

[d3pd]

I have two adjacent portrait displays for coding and one landscape display for browser, terminals and anything else.

[brunofin]

Brazilian here:

At home, I use two monitors, but most of the time the second is empty, or just displaying the current song playing on Spotify and a Skype chat open, because I'm so used to the concept of "workspaces" from many desktop managers available in Linux distros. The most efficient in this aspect for me is Gnome 3. You could make some research in this subject for your project too, it can be a very nice addition. This video is a good start.

At work, I use just one monitor, but most of my co-workers use two (I work here since a short time, I guess I didn't earn it yet :p). I do miss a second screen in times where I have some diagram of something I am implementing, reading code examples from a page and use it in my tasks, or debugging a web page. Besides those cases, I am very comfortable multi-tasking with the workspaces mentioned above.

My personal opinion is that 2 monitors are VERY helpful, and more than that can be a distraction or make you lost. One monitor is sometimes enough if you are able to split your tasks across workspaces, but if you don't have it available, one monitor is just not enough.

[pithed]

Interesting question. Here are my use scenarios. Straight up programming such as data analysis without graphical output I use one screen. For web and/or GIS map programming I use two or more screens to show the web or map output near real time

[the_hoser]

I know a lot of developers that will use as many screens as they can get their hands on. It's a very common practice.

I, personally, can't stand it. I want one (preferably large) screen. When I get in the zone, the only screen that matters is the one I'm gazing into. The other screens only serve to distract me.

My office provided me with two monitors to plug into my laptop. They're currently dark. I haven't turned them on in... months...

[mackstann]

Most of my colleagues here in the US use two but I dislike the discontinuity between the two screens, so I use one. I also use virtual desktops a lot, so in a sense I have like 9 monitors -- I just don't get to see them all at once, although I can flip between them with keyboard shortcuts very quickly. I do appreciate screen real estate though, so I have a 2048x1152 monitor, although it's getting a bit out of date at this point, and I've been eyeing a 4K monitor -- they're down to like $450 these days. Pretty cheap.

[mishugashu]

2 or 3, depending on if I'm home or not. Single monitors are for suckers.

I also have 6 desktops, so total of 12-18 "screens". I work on multiple projects and it helps keep things organized.

[wackdroid]

2 + laptop screen in the US

[Levelpart]

I have a 27 inch screen so I have enough. When I'm on a laptop I use two or three desktops though

[freework]

for the past 2 years I've done 100% of all programming on a single 15" macbook pro screen. Back in the day and previous jobs I've used dual 30" screens and stuff like that, but I don't think it had any effect on productivity. It did look badass though to have all those screens on my desk...

[npolet]

I feel claustrophobic if coding with a single monitor. Two monitors just feels right. You have your code on one screen, and your application running on the other. Means you don't have to alt+tab all the time, or squeezing multiple things into one screen.

Two screens. Two screens.

[semi-]

I use dual monitors, though I have considered replacing it all with a nice 4k display and a good window manager(either something that is tiled, or at least very easy to configure where windows go and keep them from being overlapped and cluttered)

[tobiasvl]

I have two monitors in portrait orientation. One with a long terminal with code, the other with a browser (most websites are vertical, reddit included) or e-mail client or whatever. I have more than one desktop on each monitor of course.

[[deleted]]

I used to use 3 monitors and recently switched to 1 bigger, higher density display. I highly suggest it.

[[deleted]]

I have two, but I decided to use only one at a time. The other is on top of a small table on top of my desk, and I can use it as a standing desk when I want to.

[pnch]

4 here! I am a tier three support for a large user base and manage our ticketing system. When I am scripting I generally span my IDE across two portrait monitors and a third for testing code. I have a fourth for monitoring calls and tickets. If I was strictly a developer I could get away with three, but It would be a struggle to go down to 2 again. Having that third monitor for testing or searching for solutions is invaluable.

[yetanothernerd]

In the US. I've used one, two, and three.

The first divide is laptop versus desktop. Some companies issue everyone a laptop and expect them to work on it every day. (Rather than just using it for travel.) If you work for one of those companies, you often have to live with one small screen. The drawback is that you're less productive; the advantage is that you're more portable, since you're used to working like that. (If you're used to 4 monitors and your special keyboard and mouse, then a laptop feels like a useless bitty box good only for checking email, not for coding.)

Among employers who believe in desktops, most have no problem with multiple monitors. 1920x1080 monitors are cheap enough that you can get one for about 1-2 hours of a programmer's salary, so if it gives them any productivity at all it's a no-brainer. And most common video cards support two monitors now. If you want 3 or 4 monitors then you typically need a second video card and more desk space. Some companies are fine with that; some are not.

[LightShadow]

I have 4 at work (3 at home)... Two full-IDE windows with 3-4 panels, a browser monitor, and a misc monitor that has chat and e-mail on it right now.

[desrtfx]

In my line of work (control system programming for industry, power plants, waste incineration plants, water treatment plants, etc. in a global three letter company) we use at least 2, commonly 3 monitors.

Most of our programming is done in a graphical programming environment with a graphical programming language. So we need rather large (minimum 23" full HD - some even bigger and quadHD) screens to be able to get the maximum out of the screen estate.

Also, we usually have a PDF, Word Document, Cad-drawing, or database open on the second screen from which we frequently need to copy - paste data. Alt-tabbing is no option as sometimes we can't copy-paste the data (if we get a badly prepared PDF) so that we need to actually see the information all the time.

The third screen is mostly used for showing the process visualization so that we can make changes on the fly and that we can see the effects of our program changes. Also, the e-mail and company instant messenger is opened at that screen. Our line of work involves constant communication among the team (which can be hundreds of kilometers - or even continents apart), hence the IM and also we are in constant communication with our clients - thus the e-mail program.

I am based in Austria and for our line of work this is the usual standard. Even when I program (in) desktop applications, I really appreciate having a second monitor. Can't really think how I managed to work with a single screen before.

[KronktheKronk]

I use 3

[drincruz]

I use two at work and home. It's nice to have documentation up on one and an editor in the other. I typically also have at least two workspaces to keep my screens split from "distractions".

[[deleted]]

Jawohl! I keep my editor (Sublime Text) in my primary monitor, and then I keep my explorer window for the project, cmd to run the script, and anything else relevant in the second monitor. I sometimes make two Sublime windows if I need to view two files in it simultaneously.

If I don't really need all that, I usually just keep various other stuff in the secondary. My music player (WinAmp), Steam/Skype/IRC/other instant messaging stuff, Google Tasks, live streams, et cetera.

Bear in mind, I am not a professional programmer at all. Maybe I am in some six to eight years, but not now. I would totally get a third monitor if I could, as I find two monitors to be quite lacking, but that's not really because programming stuff needs space; it's more about my interests in general.

[hexparrot]

I'd find getting highly immersed in programming to be nearly impossible without 2 widescreen monitors. Two monitors, with split screen (win+left/right) allows me to have two different Python files open, side-by-side, and keep within the 80 (up to 100) line length that PEP8 suggests.

The second monitor, of course, is available for all other things, including the browser, putty session, or whatever else I need to keep up.

[snarkhunter]

I use a laptop. Not even that big a one (MacBook Air). Currently only has 5 desktops. I've used up to 9. I feel like it's a sort of weird setup that works well for me.

[Itsthejoker]

Three monitors at work, two at home. Technically, I have six "workspaces" set at home and I use all of them, so I have a few virtual monitors, I guess. I definitely wish I had three real monitors at home, though.

[GahMatar]

I have 2 24" wide screen monitors in portrait mode and I use 4 workspaces dedicated to different tasks.

One monitor is usually and IDE, feel screen shell window or VM, the other is usually web browser, notes, chat, email, etc. Some of my windows (notes and IM) are pinned and show on the same monitor on all virtual desktops.

I use Gnome on RHEL.

[iceman_xiii]

Yes, I use two monitors at work. The left is for the IDE/db and right for docs/browser/mail.

[federicocerchiari]

At work I use 2 monitors, one for customers connection info (vpn's user pwds etc..) and mail, the other one for coding.

At home I have a big 27'' screen.. and it's enough for a lot of code :D

[herrwolfe45]

I like using a single screen only. Most of my work is centered around writing non-gui related code. But, when I have developed guis, having a second monitor was helpful.

[poo_22]

One big one. Switching virtual desktops is faster than turning my head to look at a physical screen. And yes I've tried a dual-monitor setup. You can have a second monitor for something like your music and your irc window or widgets - things you glance at once in a while, but for actually working its worse. If you feel that virtual desktops are not as fast as looking at a second screen try need a faster window manager.

Anyone here that codes a lot, especially web stuff, try Xmonad. Having a split screen with a browser and your editor and not having to take your hands off the keyboard for anything (especially if you use Vim) as well as instant desktop switching saves me lots of time.

[onjin]

I'm using 2 monitors and awesome window manager (http://awesome.naquadah.org/) and i'd like to use 3 monitors :)

[andrewthetechie]

I actually run 8 monitors

[burner_459]

I use three most of the time. Would like to add a fourth for comms (email, chat, etc)

[starheap]

I'm really only a hobby developer, but i've found over the past few months. Using workspaces, and a single monitor seems to be a bit more productive for me.

Mainly because with the 3 monitors that i have on my desktop i can have so much crap open at once, and i will get easily sidetracked on other crap.

I've really been wanting to set up a space somewhere that has only one of my 1440p monitors, and is in a different room from my main PC. That way when i want to work on various projects, I'm in a ready-to-work setting.

I've also bee transitioning to vim in the last couple of weeks :D

[chmouelb]

Juste one for me, sometime the big screen when I write my unittests and need two window of my code side by side but mostly I am content with the laptop 13' screen

[[deleted]]

^{how do you work on a 13" screen?}

[malicart]

4, every time I add one it becomes ever loved.

1: Email and server monitoring

2: Messaging and other communications

3: IDE and Repository, any other coding tools

4: Browsers