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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...
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.
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?
...the link is already Tango Down.
SHUT UP and take my money!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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?
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!
LG's got some sort of "screen splitter" software for their 21:9 monitors. Lets you break it up into 2, 3, or 4 virtual monitors of various sizes. Probably start seeing something similar built into new video drivers.
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.
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?
Dell, Acer, and others announced 28" 4K monitors over the last week at CES, all right around $799. A little bit pricier than the Seiki, but they come with DisplayPort and are able to do 4K@60Hz, IIRC. I am currently using 2-27" 2560x1440 with a 3rd 1080p that I watch TV and movies while I am working. I probably won't upgrade until HDMI 2.0 becomes commonplace.
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..
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.
Take four screenshots from today's standard 1920x1080 displays and tile them together, 2x2. Voila.
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
I would weep with glee to have 200 rows of legible text in a vi window, with room for eight such windows side-by-side on my screen. In fact, I'd probably be a lot happier with full vi keybindings (which my fingers still remember after all these years) instead of an editor that expects me to mouse around for text selection and menu commands.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
At that pixel count, I would want it in 15, maybe 20 inches, not 39.
1920x1080 2x2 means you get an useless aspect ratio. A pair of 16x18 displays is nice, no matter how many 16x9 is utterly pointless for any use other than watching bad movies.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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.
For gaming, yes. If you spend your life in a text editor or a web browser, I doubt you'd notice.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
..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?
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.
I share your disdain for normal 16:9 displays, but the fact is, one 4K display has exactly the same resolution and aspect ratio as a 2x2 tiling of 2K displays.
At these sizes, though, I think 16:9 might be more acceptable. Instead of taking away important vertical real estate from a normal-sized display, this is like adding potentially-useful horizontal space to a display that's (finally!) big enough in the vertical dimension.
I just want a display that's big enough to show a lot of text without scrolling vertically. I don't want to use a periscope to see the top.
There's hope. Panasonic just announced a 15:10 tablet (3840x2560). I still think a 20" tablet is dumb at this point on the technology curve, but if tablets start driving higher availability of squarer display panels, it'll make me really happy.
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!*
Sure, when you had scan lines -- electron beams illuminating phosphorous dots -- it was pretty horrible. Now it is just a number that tells you how quickly pixels can change on the display. Lag is a more important measure. And at 30FPS, you have at least a 33ms lag between a change occurring and it appearing on the screen. Gamers care about that. Most coders (game coders excepted) don't care.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
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?
Multiple widescreen displays are great for vertical space! Get three of them and mount them in portrait orientation.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
When Oculus Rift gain 4K resolution I will have all the display space I need. Unlimited virtual monitors...
Sorry, you're wrong. I have it hooked up to my Y500 via HDMI and it works flawlessly (well, except for the 30Hz input lag)
I bought one too, and I love it. The trick with the ghosting is to set the sharpness to '1' instead of '0' -- there's some weird divide by zero bug that makes it MUCH smoother at 1. I highly recommend the panel. Not good for colors but great for text.
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...
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.
"Dell, Acer, and others announced 28" 4K monitors over the last week at CES, all right around $799. A little bit pricier than the Seiki, but they come with DisplayPort and are able to do 4K@60Hz, IIRC."
That's good. 39" at that resolution (as in OP) might be great for a TV, but it isn't for a monitor, at all. For good ergonomics, you'd have to sit too far away from it, which makes the extra size pretty much pointless.
"I am currently using 2-27" 2560x1440 with a 3rd 1080p that I watch TV and movies while I am working. I probably won't upgrade until HDMI 2.0 becomes commonplace."
Sounds like a nice setup.
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 agree and liked the 16:10 ratio more.
16:10??? That's still crap! Why won't you get a proper 16:12 one? Narrow strips are bad in landscape, but if you try to put them in portrait they in turn are so narrow they're useless again.
Just compare screen aspect ratio to paper sizes -- designed for ergonomy rather than Hollywood execs' wishes:
16:9 1.77
16:10 1.60
16:12 1.33
A3/A4 1.41
letter 1.29
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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.
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.
Billgating Indeed. I bet in 20 years they'll look back and slap themselves.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Don't be rough on him--it's more expensive when you have to pay for an escort, too.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
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.
Nu-uh, the hookers pay for themselves - it's the blow!
Requiem for the American Dream
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.
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.
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.
Too bad, if I had mod points, I'd mod you up for that. ;-D
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
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.
Its more than gaming, any movement (i.e. your mouse pointer, scrolling) will appear to be choppy.
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".)