Slashdot Mirror
4K Is For Programmers
An anonymous reader writes "The 4K television revolution is upon us, and nobody is impressed. Most users seem content to wait until there's actually something to watch on these ultra-high-res displays, and also for the price to come down. However, Brian Hauer has written an article promoting a non-standard use for these displays. His office just got a 39", 3840x2160 display for each of their programmers' workstations. He now confidently declares, 'For the time being, there is no single higher-productivity display for a programmer.' Hauer explains: 'Four editors side-by-side each with over a hundred lines of code, and enough room to spare for a project navigator, console, and debugger. Enough room to visualize the back-end service code, the HTML template, the style-sheet, the client-side script, and the finished result in a web browser — all at once without one press of Alt-tab.'"
Must... reopen... Dell financing account.
Sounds like a startup with too much of other peoples money to spend. Who would want to crane their neck around that much. Even 27" feels awfully big at a reasonable distance.
My multiple screens already do that AND the text is large enough for me to read...
BFD. I can do this with my Samsung MD230x6 and Eyefinity6 graphics card.
And it is really awesome for coding. I'm sure 4K is even better.
Personally, While 1 large monitor could have some advantages, I feel that many smaller monitors actually work better. Most window managers don't really handle a single large monitor as well as many small ones. For instance, I can just maximize a bunch of different applications, each on different monitor. Only takes a few clicks. To do something similar with multiple monitors, I'd have to do a lot of manual movement and resizing of windows to get things to line up right. I have 3 17 inch (4:3) monitors on my desk right now. 17 inch monitors are fine for a single window. I could see how having them slightly larger would be nice, but I'd much rather have 3, 17 inch monitors than a single 40 inch monitor, no matter the resolution.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Some things are useful for some but not for others!
News at 11
I like the idea of a higher-resolution monitor letting me fit more in to the same space, but what's the physical size of a legible character on one of those things?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Are there are any good tools for treating a big monitor like this as four monitors so I don't have to manually resize everything?
...the link is already Tango Down.
Hell, I only have two and get work done. Lack of 4k is not holding me back. If you've got at least two LCD monitors, you're doing fine.
Dude, I'm with you. I'm all for 4K! But:
The MONEY!
I have to replace the GPU or even the PC.
The neck cramps.
The sunburn.
The eyestrain from the glare.
Seiki?
Still, I'm tempted.
Neck problems ahead
I don't get this acres of workstation space equals more productivity, you can only focus on so much space at a time. It really takes longer to turn your head and/or refocus your eyes on different areas than a simple alt+Tab would do. The benefits pretty much tapers off for me anything over over 2 19'' Monitors.
SHUT UP and take my money!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
A good programmer needs vi and a terminal window, not much else ;)
But then again, apparently this is a web "developer".
I do look forward to more high DPI screens however. I'd love to have a 4K 24" monitor or something along these lines.
Like the retina display on the MacBook Pros.
I don't want other distracting shit on-screen, only the content I'm interested in. If I'm cross referencing files, a key combo merely reinforces the mental context switch required to move from one file to the other.
Also 4k denotes a (cinema) display device capable of displaying 4096 horizontal pixels, not an ultra HD display with 3840 pixels.
Which window manager handles such a large display best? Modern desktop environments, whether we talk about Gnome or Windows or Mac OS X, tend to work best when you let one window take over the entire screen. Mac OS X and modern Gnome with the top-of-the-screen menu bar in particular is fairly unhelpful with a sufficiently large screen.
Can you just split it into four subscreens and do a reverse Xinerama? It makes me a bit sad that this is the state of the art after 30 years or so of GUI development.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
"Four editors side-by-side each with over a hundred lines of code, and enough room to spare for a project navigator, console, and debugger. Enough room to visualize the back-end service code, the HTML template, the style-sheet, the client-side script, and the finished result in a web browser â" all at once without one press of Alt-tab."
Not even. When I'm programming, I currently use 2 monitors with total horizontal resolution of 3600 pixels... and I still have to switch windows A LOT.
2 of these would be sweet. But they're too large. If you put the same number of pixels in a 28" screen, two of them would be just about right.
I have no interest whatsoever in changing my TV over to 4K resolution -- because there's no content, because I don't care and don't see the benefit, and because my current big screen and associated stuff is still really new.
But, I'd dearly love to have that kind of resolution for my monitor. That much screen resolution and real-estate would be awesome, especially in a dual monitor setup.
However, it's still technology, which means I refuse to be on the bleeding edge of it. I know a lot of people who bought HD TVs early in the game, only to find out that the evolving spec and addition of DRM made their TVs obsolete before they ever really got to see them fully used.
I predict there will be at least one generation of this technology which ends up getting abandoned and the purchasers will be left holding the bag.
For TV, I figure just because Sony et al want to believe I should be replacing my TV stuff every few years -- well, that's not my problem.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Currently at work I and all of my co-workers all have dual Dell 30" 2560x1600 monitors. I agree that screen real-estate (resolution, not directly the physical size) makes a huge difference. I wouldn't go back to a single 1200p (never 1080p) setup ever again; I have dual 28" 1200p screens at home for the same reason (not the 1600p ones because of cost at home). However, I am unsure of the 39" form factor for a single monitor; I think I'd rather have dual 30" monitors at lower res than a single 4k at 39". Though, the new 31.5" 4k screens from Dell/ASUS/etc would be a nice replacement for my 30" ones...
-SaNo
But 4K ought to be enough for anybody!
4k is already, but I'm waiting for 640k; that should definitely be enough
I need a machine that can drive 160 of these monitors.
640K should be enough for anyone.
believe it or not, I still code programs on a 15 inch CRT and an 800 MHz Celeron desktop. My computer is running Windows 95/98 and I still use Microsoft Visual studio 6. I do programming in dot net 1. wow, I feel old fashioned. I don't use alt-tab to switch between programs. I use the taskbar on the bottom. :)
Thanks for posting the article though.
You can currently buy a 2560x1440 27" display for around $350. The Seiki display they refer to is actually two 1920x2160 panels stitched together and limited to a painful 30hz. Second, the monitor is not 4k, it's 3840x2160 which is only UHD. 4k is 4096x2160.
Finally, this is a nearly 40 inch display. They look ridiculous as a computer monitor and the ergonomics suck.
Just give us 4k in a 27-30" form factor for people that aren't blind. I'm amazed that phones can have higher pixel densities than computer monitors.
Then graphics toolkits and IDE developers will start wasting even more space for their GUI componets and even 4K will not be enough...
"All this has happened before. All this will happen again."
The width might be reasonable, but the vertical change looking up/down the screen is likely neck strain inducing.
Beyond that they are using cheapo TVs, not monitors and the minimum brightness is very high. Fine for a TV, not so hot on a monitor you stare directly into all day.
I would MUCH rather have two smaller computer monitors, than one large cheapo TV.
Is just painful for use as a monitor as far as I've heard.
It seems slashdotted but I so wanted to see screenshots... where's my fantasy-website, damnit slashdot!
I don't like working with large monitors. At work we went through a phase where every few months our monitors were upgraded in size. I found I liked a screen up to 20 inches in size. Anything larger than that and it bothered me, I found it distracting, like my eyes couldn't find the right place to focus. I ended up downgrading from about 24 inches back to 20 and found I worked better that way. Some people may enjoy giant screens, but I just find it draws my attention away from my work.
When you have enough resolution to zoom in and accurately reconstruct Kim Kardashian's retina and fingerprints.
So what sort of video card do I need to drive a few (2 to 4) of these at one time?
I've been using 4 23inch monitors in an inverted T layout for years now. I slowly scrounged up a matching set as other engineers upgraded their monitors. Its nice to have one monitor just for email and crud out of the way of 'real work'. I even have another 19in monitor off to the side just for the console of my Linux dev box, but I usually use X forwarding to access it from the main workstation.
Yeah, I could probably be talked in to trading all these for a 39in high resolution setup. But I'm pretty happy with this setup, and I can angle the sides in for a better viewing angle. And this was a pretty cost effective setup.
Resolution yes please, physical size... meh.. I actually think there is a limit to what is practical, size wise, for a workstation.
Personally 24"/27" seems to be the sweet spot...
Too big and hello neck strain, repetitive strain injury etc..
I mean we like to sit at a desk etc, etc.. so a 39" up in my face doesn't sound very comfortable.
And having to turn my neck to use the space sounds a recipe for repetitive strain injuries.
Currently I code on 3 x 24" (@5760x1200) dells and all that real estate is very very welcome, and does increase productivity (nvidia surround is nice too :) ) but the physical width less so...
Been wanting to try 1 x landscape (center) and 2 x portraits on the sides, which could be best of both.
Would be interesting to hear other developers coding experience with monitor setups..
Hello, i read this post and it is very good ! Thanks for publish i am Gizo Chkoneli New Yourk 14 Ave Email - Gizochka@mail.ru Website - Neon Rider
I've been clamoring for larger, higher-resolution displays since the days when I chose a 16x64-character TRS-80 instead of a 24x40 PET or Apple II, and longed for the luxury of a 24x80 terminal.
The sad thing is that now, with higher-DPI displays finally coming into the mainstream, my eyes are losing their ability to focus on close objects. My iPad could display hundreds of columns of text, but I wouldn't be able to read them. Yeah, yeah, computer glasses.
I spent quite some time drooling over the 4K displays at my local big-box retailer -- one of the demo images was multiple newspaper pages, and yep, the detail was all there. I'm starting to think hard about how I can arrange a desk so one of these beasts can fit on it.
One interesting note: Panasonic just announced a 20" 4K "tablet" (yeah, right) with a 15:10 aspect ratio and 3840x2560 resolution. I've been clamoring for taller displays, too, and I'd welcome this aspect ratio -- but I wonder if a 39" desktop display has finally reached the point where it could be too tall. I also, partly because of those focal-accommodation issues, begin to wonder whether it's time to hold out for one of the curved displays.
Ah, who am I kidding. I'm cheap and stuck in my ways -- it'll be years before I make the leap.
I've had a 30" 2560x1600 monitor for maybe five years now and don't even use fullscreen for Eclipse. I don't tile windows which sounds like what you want; I just have a bunch open, some side by side, others behind the ones in front but usually with some part visible I can click on to bring them to the front.
I've used two screens before and think that's pretty good for some uses as well. I just don't see a need for extra screens if the main one is large enough. I suspect "large enough" means no commonly used application needs the whole screen. For me 24" is still below that limit.
Was I the only one who thought about the 4K demo coding contests when reading the headline?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
> Hauer explains: 'Four editors side-by-side each with over a hundred lines of code, and enough room to spare for a project navigator, console, and debugger. Enough room to visualize the back-end service code, the HTML template, the style-sheet, the client-side script, and the finished result in a web browser — all at once without one press of Alt-tab.
"Yeah, got one of those. It'd do all that, except the OS only allows me to display one fullscreen app at a time. In really REALLY high resolution, though. There is that."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Of course 4K movies are not ready, and cable television is far to be. But for PC gaming everything works out of the box even on very old games and it's awesome.
I got one of these a while ago for programming and returned it. There was definite noticeable lag for me when moving the mouse due to the 30Hz refresh rate. Also, it was almost too big (mostly vertically). My head swivels side to side fine. But I felt like I was getting a crick in my neck when I had to focus on the top of the screen.
Why would it make a programmer more productive? I spend most of my coding time thinking about what to write, not actually writing. Certainly not hitting Alt-Tab repeatedly.
Ok here is what I want. I'll take the 4K display, but I want it to curve around in much the same fashion as if I just had 3 monitors. Next, I want some kind of software built into my OS, not the screen that will allow my to arbitrarily set boundaries for what I am going to call different screens (software screens?). When I move a window to the location specified on the display as being one of those screens and maximize it should maximize only to the resolution of that screen, not to the size of the entire display. Also, I think it probably needs to be touch enabled. I mean, why not. I think this could be helpful. And sure, it would cost way too much to do it now, but this is technology, and it has a tendency to go down in price after time.
Why do people have to be impressed for something to be good? 4K video looks great and using that resolution on the desktop is even better than what everyone has today. they key is the pixel density (per square unit) I've been running the Dell 30" 2650 x 1600 monitors for the past several years and I could really go for a little more pixels to be honest - even when I originally purchased the display back in 2008. Eventually economies of scale will kick in, and 4K will be the new HD for the same money. Stop your bitching and enjoy. Also PC is long overdue for higher resolution. I do have to say that I don't know about using a TV as a computer monitor due to the lag/delay. Yes, the delay is noticeable for any computer activity and would drive me nuts - I tried doing this on a Sharp Aquos at work for a digital signboard and what a PITA that was (delay) - no way I could use that as my monitor (ergonomics aside).
I currently use a 47" TV as primary monitor at home. Would be nice to replace with higher resolution, but I'm waiting for prices to come down.
I'd much rather sit back in an easy chair and relax than worry about ergonomics.
I still think anything above 720p is just stupid.
You went and spilled the beans about 'alt-tab'!
Now it's going to be harder to find people to amaze by showing them how they can swap between applications without taking their hands off the keyboard.
Ruined all my fun...
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Rationalize away guys but it's still just a surrogate penis. At least the guys that spend the money on sports cars get girls for it...
Almost any non-negligible productivity improvement is going to recoup $500 over the lifespan of an LED monitor.
Agreed. Obligatory XKCD.
For a programmer earning $80,000/year if you can shave off 1.5 seconds 50 times per day you'll recoup the investment in 5 years. Shave off 6 seconds 50 times per day and you recoup the investment in 1.25 years. I use a multi-monitor setup and have recouped the cost many times over and I'm not even a programmer.
Tiling window managers are a must for large screens. I have been using dwm for a long time, and I could never use anything else again.
Tiling window manager
Did you see the font size in some of their photo's? Even at 39" I would strain to read that from a distance of about 3 feet. Of course, you could increase the font size, but at this point there would not be much of a difference between a 4k and say a 2k. The higher resolution means smaller font's will be displayed more accurately, but because smaller fonts are so hard to read, it doesn't make sense to use them.
If a 4k were as cheap as typical monitors out there, I'd get one of course, but to say that it's worth the cost is simply a matter of $$ in your wallet.
Programmers with their 2-4 monitors are small-fry compared to traders, who may have 6-9 monitors easily.
That is the best thing I dropped my money on for my dev environment this year. With Windows 8, The Winkey + -> or Winkey + - docks apps super easy and column up as much as you want! Apart from RAM and an SSD, this seems to be the third magic leg. My The DELL 30" from two years ago was straining on the eyes at that high DPI and the extra distance from my leaning back. This, you can set all you want. Q: Do you guys have an alternative to Seiki - some model not making the rounds? I have a small ghost effect, when downsizing fonts - not very noticeable though.Of course, this is not good for photog and stuff.. your images look weird etc. Visual Studio in all its glory, this is it!
At that pixel count, I would want it in 15, maybe 20 inches, not 39.
I really don't care if I can see the pimples on the actor's face. If I have to turn my head to read one object, then the screen is too big.
And a large room to house them in - that way I would be really productive!
No need to have then 39", pull down to 30" and they will be easier to handle and place.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I suppose you switch windows using mind power or you are implying that using the mouse to switch windows is faster than alt tabbing?
As great as the ultra quad high super resolutions are, can we get more 16:10 aspect ratio monitors?
You know what they say: When you come to a 4K in the road, take it!
I'll be here all week, folks! Unless I come across a 4K in the road...
There's a third way. Try a tiling window manager.
Or mouse follow focus. For many operations I often don't want the window raise as long as I can type into it when I want.
..maybe you should have checked how tiny they turn out on my 4K display.
As a programmer and someone with terrible vision (Google "nystagmus"), ridiculously high resolution monitors are particularly useless for and even detrimental to my productivity. Yes, I can fit 10 programs on the screen at once, but none of that matters as I can not read the resulting size 6 font in each of those windows. I'll stick to my two, 20", 1280 x 800 goodies.
Once people are getting used to have multiple 40'' monitors, office furniture business will race into the sky...
I understand not using 30 fps for gaming. But wouldn't a 30 fps LCD be able to downshift to 24 fps for watching feature films?
guy sez he spend $500 a pop on em.
I thought the slang was Tango Uniform (mammaries up).
More is better to a point, but productivity does not scale linearly with the number of lines of code displayed simultaneously.
I'm open minded, but unconvinced that it's especially better than two (or three) modest size displays. I'd be interested to hear from others who have tried both approaches (enormous display vs. a few smaller ones).
There are in principle NO advantages to a multiple monitor setup.
Not true at all in practice. There are several advantages to multi-monitor setups.
1) No requirement to arrange the monitors in a single plane. I can position the smaller monitors in a more optimal physical arrangement if desired.
2) The cost of several smaller monitors is often (though not always) less than the cost of one bigger monitor
3) Many machines (especially older ones) cannot drive the larger displays but can easily drive several smaller ones
4) With a multi-monitor setup I can extend or clone my primary display depending on my needs at the time.
Whether a single or multi display setup is ergonomically superior is circumstance and individual dependent. I've also found the gaps between monitors to seldom be an issue in practice. I thought it would be annoying but once you start doing it you never notice it.
I'm not arguing that a large monitor isn't a better option sometimes, merely that there are plenty of circumstances where a multi-monitor setup is at least modestly superior.
I think 4k displays on the desktop will be most useful to make Microsoft's crappy grayscale font rendering tolerable. Outside of this I stopped caring about screen resolution years ago.
What is the difference between a small point font and a huge monitor? If you want more lines of code on screen change point size and use fonts optimized for lower DPI. The results are sure to amaze.
If your going to have a 39" beast in front of you .. your going to sit at some increased distance from it... cones of your eyes only have a ***15 degree FOV*** the rest is subconscious illusion / wishful thinking.
Moving your head/eyeballs around all day is not progress nor is wasting your time heckling the boss for an ultra deep desk to compensate. I choose to be smart about using a single display which already covers most of my field of view with sufficient resolution. More is not always better. A little discipline regarding usage of display areas goes a long way and for god sakes changes your fonts.
Finally 16:9 is a shit aspect ratio for main display for programmers unless display is configured in portrait mode. You need at the very least 16:10.
Laptops have their advantages, but a big screen makes it easier to share your movie or game with friends who are visiting your home.
I've always been into having the maximum real estate I a monitor. That's why I hated when most of the monitors started coming out at 1920x1080 versus 1920x1200. I still love my dell 24" 1920x1200, but i'll be looking forward to getting something with even more pixels.
meh
Please excuse typos I am posting from my 4x2 24 inch monitor laptop with combined resolution of 7680x2400
To the computer the Seiki is seen as two displayport monitors even though it's a single physical panel. It's a limitation of the controllers in this generation of screens. Once HDMI 2.0 comes out then we'll see "real" 4K support.
A monitor that big would be nice for a conference room or large scale rendering environment but for document editing I think I would rather have separate monitors to show different views. Tile several 1080p monitors next to each other and you have the added advantage of zooming each document full screen. Have the side ones on a pivot so you can rotate them to portrait as needed for extra vertical resolution with text documents.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Completely agree. A larger monitor would be of no use to me at all - in most situations I hate to see anything more than a single window and I can switch between the different virtual screens with just a keystroke. With focus follows mouse policy and suitable positioned windows there's no need to touch the mouse most of the time. And having 100 or more lines of code visible at once only increases the temptation to write spaghetti code insteas of splitting things up in nice little units.
I want a protected area of the screen where I can park icons, files, and folders. When I maximize a window or move windows around, I want the desktop to reserve that space so that it is never covered up. Anyway to do this with Windows 7?
As great as a giant wall of information can be for your spatial orientation and how much it will help you to get a feeling for the big picture“ (no pun intended), you can focus on one thing only which means 99% of the time more than 70% of your screen real estate is just wasted.
In the old days we once hung code printouts to our office wall, to talk about the program flow, but we rarely needed this.
Id even go as far to say that smaller screens force you to write better code.
When Porn invades 4K it will "rocket" to success. You can just "smell" it cum'n.
The Seiki TVs do not have an input that can do 4K from a PC:
Video Connections: 1 Analog & Digital TV Tuner, 1 Component Video Input, Component Video (Y, Cb, Cr/Y, Pb, Pr): One VGA Input (15 pin, D-Sub)
Nothing here can get 4K digitally from a PC.
When Oculus Rift gain 4K resolution I will have all the display space I need. Unlimited virtual monitors...
Anyone working on a page layout or making fine adjustments on a photograph would appreciate the extra resolution. I remain "enh" on 4K in entertainment -- I think 1080P is more than enough, assuming that the content is authored reasonably well, something that's more important than mere resolution -- but 4K on the computer screen, for content creation, would be a godsend. Finally, enough room to have both tools and content on the screen at the same time!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So this works out to a whopping... 113 dpi. I have been using two 20" 16x12 (ie, 100dpi) monitors for eons now and continue to look for a single screen upgrade on the order of 150dpi (or higher). There are none, though not suprising as 2.666 would be oddly sized.
However, I do require at least the same physical screen realestate (ie, not shorter just because the display is 16:9). It seems I need 4800x2700 w/ 36.7" diagonal. Perhaps if I wait another five years... though these guys are already 11 years old...
John Carmack was rocking a big ass 1920x1080 CRT in 1995. Sure helped the most influential id tech branch a ton
Are you also angry that they've got decent computers rather than underspecced, second hand $100 shitboxes?
I suspect that if every programmer had to use a $100 second-hand shitbox, that indignity would be justified by the time that I alone would recover from hourglasses, beach balls, and other various twirlies.
A previous employer found a compromise. We had two computers on our desk, a current decent machine (not extravagant though) and the older machine that it replaced. Our software was expected to run well on both machines.
It seems like you'd be better off with a pair of 27" monitors for programming.
When desktop displays get to be that big, they need to be curved. Here's Samsung's 105-inch curved display.
If you need more than a few dozen lines of code at the same time, your code sucks! Productivity will raise once you stop violating SRP and writting spagheti code.
My other signature is a car
The visual angle looking at the middle of a 24" screen from 16" away is twice the arctangent of 3/4, which is two times 37 degrees, or 74 degrees.
You mention plywood on sawhorses....
Last job, my desk WAS a pair of sawhorses and a door.
Ok, so it was the IKEA equivalent, but still, I actually really liked it.
I have really long legs, and the lack of a back on my desk meant that I could stretch my legs out and be comfortable while I was within comfortable arms reach of my keyboard and mouse.
A door blank and two metal filing cabinets actually makes a pretty good desk. The door is finished wood, vs most non-furniture grade plywood.
I wouldn't call 4KB of memory exactly enough, but it used to be what we would see and all we got.
I went to the Amazon page. The image on the 4K monitor on their website doesn't look any nicer than any of the other images on my monitor.
If I have three monitors and one of them flakes out, I lose 33% of my desktop. If I have one monitor and one of them flakes out, I lose 100% of my desktop.
I'd rather have failures cost me 33% of my desktop, even if they happen three times as frequently as the 100% failures. And with 4K displays so new, I don't know whether they'll be as reliable as legacy tech.
Once as a co-op student, I arrived at my new workplace on the first day and was handed a brand new $2000 laptop to use for the 3-month gig. Not provided: a 5 dollar networking cable to connect it to the office LAN.
It turned out there was currently a purchasing freeze in place, for some sort of corporate financial reasons. Our local IT team had run out of network cables a few weeks before and were absolutely forbidden to purchase any. Our new team lead candidly advised us to walk around looking for empty cubicles and steal the network cables from them.
Wake me when the 4K Oculus Rift is available.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
Last self-reply.
Sometimes you just want to read the bottom of a long article on the top half of a tall display within a screen-maximized Firefox instance. It's Firefox that causes the problem in the first place, making pessimistic assumptions about deployable pixels.
I can hear it whispering churlishly "you should be thankful that content is on the screen at all" never mind that it's forcing me to hold my head at an awkward angle. I suppose a Firefox designer afflicted with use-case blindness could argue that if I don't want to incline my head downwards, I should maximize my view port to the top half of my tall display.
Wrong.
The peripheral viewing area is extremely valuable when zooming around and regaining your bearings. Excess horizontal area is pretty much useless for anything other than turning your browser window into a strip mall.
A live wall of code all over my wall... in an 8 pixel font... amber on black... I'm going to faint.
I love toys as much as the next person, but what does 4K have to do with programmers writing code? Isn't it just the size of the screen that matters? Do programmers really need text editors (isn't that what software editors are?) in ultra HD? Couldn't they just use a 39" regular HD monitor and get the same result? Am I missing something?
Billgating Indeed. I bet in 20 years they'll look back and slap themselves.
Table-ized A.I.
Smaller screens mean you can focus more on the area of interest. Less distance for a mouse cursor to travel. The more monitors and bigger screens you have, the more time you spend ui navigating. False economy I'm afraid.
We've all seen technology advancing, as it's been doing. And I remember when the PC that I had, came with 32MB of RAM. I talked my parent into giving me their credit card, so that I could go spend $200 of their money on another 32MB, for a total of 64MB of RAM!!! Oh the things that I'd be able to do! I could run a really cool program that enabled me to edit video. Now the very act of upgrading RAM itself, seems to be 'just another thing to make computing slightly better'. No one gets excited over RAM anymore.
A few years ago, the programing dept where I used to work started asking for a second monitor. They said that it'd help them work faster. Prior to them getting the monitors, our release time was every 2 weeks, and generally had 10% bugs. After the new monitors, the release time remained 2 weeks, but the bug rate was up to about 14%. They had to extend the release time to 3 weeks. Once they did that the bugs went to about 18%. They had to regroup and come up with a solution, so they decided to stop having a release date at all, and just release when the bugs were 'gone' (you know). That slipped into a 2-month cycle for about a year.
Now, I'm not saying that 2 monitors (or any amount of extra workspace) is a bad idea, but technology seems to be a black hole, whereby one has to continuously poor stuff into it, just to remain at a level 'failing rate' (I say failing rate, because why was their current rate of working bad?). I feel that it's because the more you put into the situation, the more you expect out of it, and in the end, I feel that the programers were rushed, trying to justify their new shit.
Regardless what you think about technology, the same thing applies: A man can dig 1 hole. 2 men can dig that same hole twice as fast. But 200 men cannot dig a single hole at all. Also, 1 man can dig 1 hole. 2 men can dig that same hole twice as fast. But 2 men cannot dig 200 holes at all (at least not when considering a time frame requirement). Load balancing an office environment is not an easy task, and the very reason that it's hard to begin with, cannot be solved simply by throwing in new technology. I feel that this is because generally people will do (X) amount of work (work completed, not tasks in general) and rest for (X*.125) time.
Another bit I've noticed, is that if someone likes what they're doing, they can always make do with what they have, and a much larger scale than those that have a shitload of technology as tools, but don't like what they're doing. I feel that this whole "2 monitor" or "Huge workspace" concept will soon be the same as the whole new RAM concept. Of course, there's always management that will always press you to do more work, if they give you more "tools" to work with, causing the whole happiness of getting the extra workspace to fade anyway.
But what the hell do I know, I only use Autocad. I'm not a 'programer'.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
who the hell spends $500 on a "night out"? Do you live in monaco?
eeeeeet
the blue screen of death in windows 4k is supposed to be quick and painless...
IBM had produced a monitor capable of delivering 3840x2400 pixels on a 22" display. In the year 2001. The only reason these new displays aren't insanely expensive is that they've done nothing but increase the number of pixels at a given pixel size.
What comes to the movie issue on 30Hz display, if you wanted to watch 24fps content, you would manually have to change to a 24Hz mode every time.
Ideally, a maximized application would request a frame rate from the window system, just as applications requested a palette back in the 1990s before high-color support became common. For example, most applications would leave it at the default, but a video player would set it to a multiple of 24, 25, or 30 frames per second depending on what's displayed.
an SSD in my work computer since the thing is so damn slow. (Yes I've asked for one and no they haven't gotten me one.) If they're not willing to buy me one of those I can't see them actually be willing to spend, oh my god $500, on a new monitor. (But of course the next time anything goes wrong upper management comes running to dev without a first or second thought.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
You people are weird, I've been on 4x 1920x1200 monitors for years now (2x portrait, 2x landscape; It's fucking marvellous). I have a fifth but no desk space (or interest in turning head to view) so it's a spare.
This cost... I dunno, peanuts, even a few years back.
Super strongly recommend at _least_ a pair of portrait monitors plus at least one landscape. It's practically impossible to go back.
[FrLz]
I've been using this E16 theme since 1998 in various workplaces on a variety of distros:
https://contentmgmt.quinstreet.com/imagesvr_ce/linuxplanet/enlightenment.png
Note the Win7 style window snapshotting.
At home I'm using E17.
can we just stop calling it 4k and just use the proper UHD (Ultra HD)? it it's not 4096 pixels wide, it's not 4k... cinemas are using proper 4k for a while, but for TVs and monitors, it's usually UHD (2x each dimension in FullHD / 1920x1080 == 3840x2160), which is awesome, but should not be called "4K".
No need to be a disingenuous dick.
Which is why I wasn't trying to be one. G-Sync and mode setting solve two different problems. G-Sync is used when the frame rate varies unpredictably within a single work, such as real-time rendering of frames in a video game. Mode setting would be used when the frame rate is constant throughout a work but happens not to divide the frame rate used for the desktop.
Maybe it's only a problem for eyes with half a century of view time on them, but I found the 30" monitor I bought last year to be a source of eye strain. Basically, if I'm close enough to view the incredible detail at the center of the screen, then objects toward the periphery rapidly lose focus as the hypotenuse distance increases. Well, that, and that strong coke-bottle-bottom corrective lenses also distort objects away from the center viewing axis.
The problem is in the programs, not the OS. You can very easily set a maximum window size of your main form. Hardly any programmer does this. The program should maximize to what it needs, not to the maximum screen size any more.
4k is also for CCTV and 5MP, 10MP further coming cameras
Actually, multiple displays is the only solution for at least one development context. For writing and debugging common code, I see a tiling WM on a big display as in OP as a big advantage. OTOH, for web site styling and development with today's DEs, I see it only being counter-productive. For web styling, one cannot have too many different displays, because too many display-related environmental variables need evaluation. Display sizes out in the wild vary widely, as do device densities, not to mention viewing distances and visual acuities. Behavior, window sizes and text sizes on a Retina display can be vastly different than on a cheap cell phone, iPad, 14" 1024x768 laptop, 17" SXGA, 20" UXGA or 37" HDTV. Far more permutations exist than the few I listed. A web stylist limited to one display or just a few displays with similar characteristics, can't possibly test thoroughly, and thus can't be fully aware of the impact of his effort.
Apple's are 1000 a piece and I do not see anybody complaining!
I've spent many years using and studying monitors for programming. I think this developer is missing some things. Ideally and ergonomically I feel that three monitors is best. One center and two flanking, all the same type. More than that (like those 6x setups) is too hard to see all the windows. The three ideally are on a circular desk so they wrap around you in a 90 degree arc. There are Herman Miller corner desks with this configuration. Ideally at some point in the future we'll be able to buy a 90 degree curved computer screen as they showed in Avatar (the movie), but this is quite fine for now. Let's compare to three 27" monitors, a not atypical setup for a programmer 3840x2160 is 8,294,400 pixels 3x27” monitors is 3,686,400x3 = 11,059,200 which is a higher resolution More importantly for programming is surface area which relates to pixel density, so you can put up more windows as he noted (assuming that the density provides sufficient clarity to read text) Assume 30”x20” for that monitor shown = 600 square inches Three 27" monitors is approximately 23”x13” x 3 = 900 square inches Again three ordinary 27" monitors wins. However it costs more, his only costs $500. But you also have a monster screen on your desk that probably weighs a lot, and I'd think is too high in the vertical direction. Craning up and down to see code isn't good either.
Perhaps not right now in practice, but all of the factors you mentioned can be theoretically overcome, either with spending a little more, and/or better software to emulate the temporary advantages
Exactly how is software going to allow me to place my single monitor in anything other than a single plane? How is software going to allow my the PC on my desk to drive a large 4K monitor when the hardware demonstrably cannot do it now and cannot realistically be upgraded? How is software going to clone a monitor AND let me flip it around so someone on the other side of the desk can see what I see at the same time?
With a single screen, we have the big advantage of height of course
You can stack multiple monitors vertically. In fact unless I have an application where the gaps between monitors is unacceptable (rare in practice), I can stack multiple monitors higher vertically than any single monitor. I've actually worked with a 2X2 array of monitors at times effectively creating a 4K monitor out of 4 1080P monitors.
Plus someone else pointed out that if your single monitor fails you lose your entire desktop. If one monitor in a multi-monitor setup fails, you still can use your computer. While monitors generally are quite reliable, they do fail on occasion.
Look, there are plenty of use cases where a larger monitor is totally the way to go. However there also are plenty of cases where a multi-monitor setup is preferable. Neither is universally superior to the other.
I'm "stuck" with a corporate laptop (a rather nice one actually) but it is a slightly older model so it can't output 4K, and DisplayLink http://www.displaylink.com/ doesn't have a release date for their USB to 4K solution yet: http://www.displaylink.com/news/pressreleaseviewer.php?id=146 Does anyone know of a good solution that won't break the bank?
Anyone actually tried one of those cheap Seiko ones?
... using it as a computer monitor, try it out, and if the shop won't let you do it, leave it. I bought a Philips tv with that intention, and it has several kinks that make it less suitable than I hoped for. Not only does it take longer to start up than my computer to boot, but also the menus are terribly cumbersome, and the tuning options for color, resolution etc. are not well suited for computer use.
The 4K television revolution is upon us, and nobody is impressed.
Speak for yourself!
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
There is no "4K". What you're referring to is DCI 4K.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution#Resolutions
And 3840 x 2160 is "4K UHD", so it's as much "4K" as "DCI 4K" is. (Though to the extent that actually having at least four thousand pixels across would be a defining characteristic of any "4K" resolution, the DCI standard has more "4K-ness".)