Multi-Monitors and Increased Development Productivity?

cK-Gunslinger asks: "I'm looking for some definitive, legitimate studies/research that show that using a multiple-monitor setup yields increased productivity for code development. (or disproves, as the case may be.) I've seen many online 'articles' that praise the virtues of multi-monitor setups for content creation and HTML editing, but my interest lies more in the OO design, coding, and test realm. Sites such as RealTime offer some good info, albeit not completely unbiased. And who doesn't drool over X-Top systems. I'd like to submit a proposal to our IT and Process groups recommending a "trial run" on some small project, but am having a difficult time finding enough empirical evidence to crack the budget-clench. I'd also be interested in user comments on how multi-mon setups have helped your productivity as well as how you typically use your setup (what apps, how many monitors, CRT vs LCD, etc.)"

Comments

i don't have any definate research, but....

[Cheeze]

...I have used a dual monitor setup for several years now at home, and when i go to the office, i find myself sending quite a bit of time alt-tabbing back and forth between applications.

To be able to have documentation open on one screen, and your actual work on the other screen would speed up development. I know using spreadsheets benefit greatly using the monitor spanning, where your work is spread over both monitors. I can see how a vertical monitor configuration would allow a coder to view more code at the same time, and would probably speed up development.

my setup

[epine]

Four desktops, each two monitors in size. First desktop: journal, several tabbed browser windows for general research. Second desktop: on the left three emacs windows, one for front end PHP code, one for back end PHP code, one for CSS stylesheets; on the right, four console windows open to various points in the source tree where I can do source code control manipulations and run commands to publish the new code to various test servers. Third desktop: left side, various SSH consoles open to web servers and capturing web server log outputs; right side, three different types of browsers to view the test pages. Four window: left side, free for hire; right side, SSH sessions to the embedded devices that capture our data and to the company's corporate web server where functions as a bulletin board for the development team. And then there are two more desktops I keep for stuff I'm only working on casually. Use some instances of Dia for making diagrams to post into the corporate workweb, image processing tools, etc. And the left monitor itself is special: I press the input button it switches to display the output of a W2K machine which I also use to test web pages and for browsing web sites that suck in Mozilla.

But that's just me, right? Not "definitive". Use your brain, guy. I used to buy shelfloads of C++ books. My desktop was my second monitor. You know, that chunk of wood that supports your mouse and keyboard. I used to look down there to learn things I needed to know while I was working. It has been two years since I bought a book to prop on my desktop. Any book I buy now sends me to the big leather chair. What else has changed? Could it be that my work is smattered across seven different embedded systems and web servers? That never happened back when I was running a Pentium system. And let's not forget you can almost fit the list of all XML standards on a single 19" monitor if you use small fonts (and you never actually click into them). And it's not possible that I could need to reference materials on Perl, Python, JavaScript, and PHP all in the same hour. Or that I might be running tail -f | grep on six different files under /var/log while also running daemons in console mode to locate the source of a problem.

My suggestion is give up. The definitive study that having one hand tied behind your back impedes your work flow probably doesn't exist.

Scrounge the equipment

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Most shops have a boneyard of old monitors and adapters. Surely you can scrounge enough stuff to do your own trial. If you can't find it at work, there's usually surplus shops around that can sell you what you need for about the price of an upscale lunch.