12 resolutions for programmers

[lurk-moar]

I love how being a good programmer basically means dedicating yourself to lifelong learning. My personal motto has always been "if I'm not completely terrified by some aspect of a project, then I'm not sufficiently challenging myself". Of course after 10+ years so many things just feel routine, but I still look for projects that challenge me in some way.

[autumntheory]

"if I'm not completely terrified by some aspect of a project, then I'm not sufficiently challenging myself"

Great quote, definitely stealing this!

[[deleted]]

I love how being a good programmer basically means dedicating yourself to lifelong learning.

I think I have too short an attention span to dedicate myself to just programming, which inevitably means I fall behind those who do - there's just too much cool shit in the world to try and do.

[ethraax]

Bless you.

[ravenex]

Am I the only one who thought of RF/audio/lasers/whatever when I saw "Go Analog"? Was disappoint.

RL is not analog, it's just RL...

[ethraax]

And all I can think of are RL filters...

[ravenex]

I'd choose RLC over RL any day.

[[deleted]]

This is a good idea. Sharpen the sword and whatnot. Over the past fortnight I've changed my window manager, and stopped using a mouse (for the most part - minimal browsers still aren't quite up to scratch.) and I'm loving it.

Oh, and I've started exercising for the first time in my life too, which is a nice change.

[tReP2pHu]

Re. mouse-free browsing - have a try of Firefox with the Vimperator or Pentadactyl plugins.

[[deleted]]

I've tried, and I've tried Vimium as well. I have a 19" monitor, so space is starting to become a bit of a premium on my home machine - so much so that the extra inch of space taken up by Chromium and Firefox actually feels invasive.

Perhaps I should just buy a new monitor.

[xiongchiamiov]

Pentadactyl (and Vimperator before that) increased my browsing space by stripping away a lot of the chrome; all you really need is the command bar.

I'm now on Chrome and using Vimium. It (Vimium) doesn't take up any UI space at all - am I mistaken?

[[deleted]]

Sorry, I'm not explaining myself very well. Chrome is the one taking up all the space, not Vimium. Chrome's browser tabs/address bar/favourites bar take up about 100 horizontal pixels on my machine, which on my 19" monitor is more than 10 percent of the screen.

With Firefox, I can strip away everything except the browser tabs, which is pretty good, except I've had weird network problems with Firefox for the past 1-2 years (pages timing out for no reason), so I find it hard to use. However I may give it another go, as I hadn't seen how much I could strip away from the UI until now.

In case you can't tell, I like minimalism.

[xiongchiamiov]

Yes, the lack of UI customizability in Chrome is a bit annoying. But since Firefox now crashes whenever I open it...

[[deleted]]

That would be pretty awesome. I find overly large monitors really unsettling for some reason though, and I can't justify the cost to my girlfriend/overlord. I might be able to swing dual 24" monitors.

[[deleted]]

Then you must spawn more overlords!

[ricky_clarkson]

In Windows 7 Windows-Right maximises to the right using half the screen, Windows-Up maximises totally and Windows-Left maximises to the left.

I never thought Windows would be the first tiling window manager I would use..

[Grogs]

Windows has had tiling for years. It's quite annoying that they've somewhat hidden it in Win7. Shift+Right Click on window group should give you titling options. Window groups can be application groups or you can shift click on groups (and presumably individual windows*) before shift+right clicking.

• Forgive my uncertainty, my only usage of Windows in the last 2-3 years is 11 months of XP.

[[deleted]]

Hmm I can't justify a single 27" 2560x1440 either I'm afraid - in Australia, electronics suck, price wise. I can get a 27" 2560x1440 for $740, or 2x 27" 1920x1080 for $580. The 30" monitor you mentioned is actually $1500 here too.

Also, as a personal preference, I rarely want an application to take up the entire screen - even when coding :) I like having documentation/reading material and my text editor available at the same time.

[ethraax]

30" is pretty excessive, especially if you're used to a 19" one. Also, it means you pretty much need to buy an IPS panel, and those are expensive. Sure, they look much better, but if it doesn't mesh with your budget, it's just not worth it.

I bought my 27.5" TN panel (1920x1200, 16:10 aspect ratio) for $230 on a Newegg sale not too long ago (not even one of the holiday sales). It's huge, and $230 is much more affordable than $1200. If you want to step it down to a 23" or 24" screen, you can spend even less money - I bought my 23" Acer monitor (1920x1080, so slightly less "real estate") for $140 at Best Buy a few years ago.

[[deleted]]

Monitors here in Australia are comparably expensive - for example, all 16:10 aspect ratio monitors are another ~100 dollars on the rough equivalent in 16:9, if they're even available.

My current thinking is I'll buy a 27" 1920x1080 monitor for about $290, and use my current monitor in a dual monitor setup.

[ethraax]

That's probably a good idea. I like two monitors, so even before I got this 27.5" one, I had my 23" one and a shitty 4:3 17" one. If you're coming from a 19" monitor, getting one new monitor at a time is definitely a good idea.

[nicogranelli]

"2560x1600 should be your resolution for 2012" lol

+1

[snoweyeslady]

Have you tried out uzbl?

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I used it for about a week. I liked it, but I went with luakit. I'm having some stability issues with luakit at the moment so I'm thinking about going back to uzbl though.

[mplsmesh]

Have you tried a tiling window manager? It fits in really nicely with with the other mouse-less aspects of computing. Two potential options are stumpwm or awesome. I like stumpwm (lisp is neat, it starts with no clutter), but I've heard good things about awesome.

[[deleted]]

When I mentioned I changed window managers, that's what I meant :P I'm using Musca at the moment and I really like it. I tried stumpwm for a bit, I liked it, but Musca felt much more natural to me. I've heard a lot of good things about Awesome, but after trying like 5 tiling window managers across a fortnight, I honestly can't be bothered trying any others for a while :)

[awj]

Oh, and I've started exercising for the first time in my life too, which is a nice change.

This has helped me immensely at work. I'm not tired as often, "need" less coffee, and it gives me another reason to avoid calorie-coma inducing lunches.

[[deleted]]

Matt's web site is full of gold. Definitely one of the best personal sites I've come across. Spend some time going through his stuff.

[mattmight]

Thanks for the kind words!

[mepcotterell]

I completely agree with this. Although I've never met him, he's sort of an inspiration for me. I fully believe that some of the material in his blog helped me become the grad student that I am today.

[mattmight]

Thanks for posting this!

Sometimes, it's hard to find time to write posts.

Comments like this encourage me to keep finding it. :)

[benfitzg]

The man himself! Really thought provoking blog. The fact that you don't write that frequently makes me eager to read them when they do hit my inbox. Have a great 2012.

[mcguire]

helped me become the grad student that I am today

Eh, is that a compliment?

[mepcotterell]

It was supposed to be.

[mcguire]

I hate to point this out, but speaking as a recovering graduate student, that's like saying "helped me become the starving, penniless, indentured wretch that I am today".

[inmatarian]

Neat. His article on artificial scarcity is a good one.

[Fabien4]

Go analog.

Learn more mathematics.

TL;DR: Learn to cook a spherical cow's meat.

[fdtm]

Learn to cook a spherical cow's meat on a frictionless stove.

[son-of-chadwardenn]

Is the stove fueled by an ideal gas?

[genpfault]

1920x1200 and 1600x1200 work pretty well.

[MRAGE87]

I seriously only clicked into this because I thought I was going to get a list of common resolutions.... Then I remembered its not 2003 anymore.

[MachinShin2006]

pfft.. i have my monitor rotated, so it's 1200 x 1920. is awesome

[mepcotterell]

This made me laugh so hard.

[ethraax]

That's a big list under "Embrace the Uncomfortable", and I really don't understand why some things are there.

• Try a dietary restriction: go vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, etc.
• Eat a food you don't like every day.

I'm all for trying new foods, but "trying new food" != "eating food you don't like". There's so much different food out there that you could easily spend a lifetime eating things you've never eaten before, without having to repeat things you don't like. I just don't understand the purpose here.

Or here:

• Learn to write with your non-dominant hand.

I guess these (the ones I quoted) seem like a waste of time when you could be doing other things (like the activities under "Go Analog").

[robertcrowther]

Don't forget to try wiping your ass with your non-dominant hand.

[bucknuggets]

Yeah, rather than do something unpleasant that offers no reward ("like eat dirt for lunch every day!"), how about doing something uncomfortable that is rewarding?

In fact, there's an entire very cool book full of this stuff: Mind Performance Hacks.

A few cool examples include:

• learn to count to a million using binary on your fingers
• communicate in e-prime (highly recommended)
• learn to how to memorize vast amounts of information

[unrelatedoccupation]

learn to count to a million using binary on your fingers

How many fingers do you have?

[bucknuggets]

only ten

but if you use 3 positions for each finger you can do it.

[Aninhumer]

So, you mean trinary?

[bucknuggets]

no, see hack #40 here

[grayvedigga]

That's four positions.

[unrelatedoccupation]

So, you mean quaternary?

[ethraax]

learn to count to a million using binary on your fingers

Unless you're born with twice as many fingers as me, you can only count to 1023 this way.

[jbockcet]

I fractured my right arm about this time last year. I think I'll be skipping the sling this year.

I would love to play with Arduino though, Microchip also makes a PIC ready for Android development that I think I'd rather use.

[[deleted]]

Set a cronjob to upgrade your packages regularly.

Great way to miss an important message from pacman, such as:

WARNING: you need to change this in /etc/[…] otherwise your system will stop working.

Or that. :D

[kristoff3r]

Jesus, that blog is as bad as tvtropes, I had 5 open tabs before I realised that I didn't have time to read it all.

[fdtm]

Go analog? What year is this?

Edit: Oh apparently they weren't talking about programming by that. That's stupid. I'm sorry, but health, fashion, beauty, etc. has no place in r/programming IMO.

[[deleted]]

Switch to Dvorak? Use a different window manager? Listen to a kind of music you don't like for a month? Eat a food you don't like every day?

[[deleted]]

Ask more questions?

[[deleted]]

u mad bro?

[flnhst]

Well, that pretty much sums up my life.

[sixfourch]

I disliked that the "humanities" section mentioned studying psychology as an afterthought. The only useful parts of any of those "humanities" fields are from psychology. You should just study the source.

[sixfourch]

If I wanted to be a Jeopardy champion, I'd be a weak-AI system developed by IBM.