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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.
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.
If you were an investor you'd be upset at a company spending $500 a head replacing programmer's monitors? Sorry, but that's idiotic.
Almost any non-negligible productivity improvement is going to recoup $500 over the lifespan of an LED monitor.
Yeah, I have a three-monitor setup that is pretty dang sufficient. Plus, I can use window-maximizing on individual screens rather than have to manually space or automatically tile all my windows (which leads to weird window sizing that I don't like in most OS'es). Three 24" monitors take up more space, but they still actually fit on a reasonable desk, and unless you're going top of the line (which you may need for photo or video work, but not for programming), they're going to be a lot cheaper than a single 39" 4k screen even with other comparable specs (brightness, refresh, gamut, etc.).
Not that I wouldn't love one, but no, this is not 4k's silver bullet.
SHUT UP and take my money!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If you RTFA you'd find that these are Seiki 4K unit that marked down to $500 each after Xmas, making them more cost effective than a multiple monitor setup
Yeah, because spending $500 on a monitor is just outrageous. That's an insane amount of money to spend on equipment for someone paid several times that amount every week.
So let me get this straight:
You'd be angry that the company was spending some tiny fraction of the programmer's total annual cost (salary + taxes +pension + health insurance + building overheads + support overheads)--even smaller when you amortize it over the life of the monitor--to make the expensive programmers more productive.
You're nuts.
Are you also angry that they've got decent computers rather than underspecced, second hand $100 shitboxes?
If it costs you $10k per year to make the programmer 10% productive, that's going to be a substantial win unless you have very cheap programmers.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
you're kidding right? a monitor will last you easily 6-7 years (my monitor at work is nearly 8 and it's still running just fine) and a large/high-res monitor will give you a noticeable increase in productivity, and you are angry about a $100/head/year expenditure? maybe you'd want his programmers not to have desks but just a sheet of plywood on some sawhorses since that'd be cheaper? stools instead of ergonomic chairs?
If anything, if I was an investor I'd be more angry about him cheaping out on a repurposed tv and not spending $2-3k for a 'proper' 60Hz 4k monitor (mouse lag would drive me nuts) but that's just me.
-- the cake is a lie
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.
Pretty much the same as on 19" fullHD display.
It's the same PPI, you insensible clod!
Well, to be fair, at 40 inches, 4k actually starts to make sense. It's basically the same as 4, 1080p monitors, each being 20 inches. So, you could basically get a similar layout by purchasing 4 smaller monitors, and then arranging them in big rectangle. Plus, as I said in another post, arranging windows is easier on multiple monitors.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
A 39" widescreen (16:9) has an area of about 650 sq inches (~40in x ~19.12in). A 22" widescreen is about 207 sq inches (~19.2in x ~10.75in). I use three 22" widescreens at home, which is a pretty optimal setup, but I would gladly trade it for a single 39" because it gives you slightly more viewing space, but changes it from a very long X axis and very short Y axis to a balanced X and Y axis, which seems like it would be a little more ergonomic. You can't compare it to a single 27" monitor because that's not its competition... multiple smaller monitors is what a 39" would replace.
My concern with a screen that size would be that the sides are that much further from you than the center. With multiple monitors, I can tilt them to maintain an optimal distance. With a monitor this large, you might be better off with one of those slightly curved LCDs they're starting to come out with,
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.
So what sort of video card do I need to drive a few (2 to 4) of these at one time?
4k makes sense at half that size; we just don't expect it yet. High-DPI monitors look beautiful, provided the interface displayed on them is similarly high-dpi. I've been watching them make their way up through phones and tablets to laptops, waiting for the day that I could have one at my workstation.
I never want to see a pixel again.
I once saw an entire team of 10 decent programmers turned into door stops because spending 10 dollars more for each one was 'too much for the budget'. Yeah so is losing 3 weeks of work out of them while we RMA monitors and buy the right ones ANYWAY. Out of the computers that were bought 5 for DOA. One actually had screws loose in the case. I picked it up and heard ratle ratle ratle. "let me get you a different one you do not want this one". I was able to build 1 working out of those 5. Instead of doing my real job of writing code.
You dont have to buy people 10k rigs. But dont buy the 200 dollar special at sears and hope it works.
But 40" won't be enough to view her ass.
Have gnu, will travel.
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
Response from management:
Eh, accounting says we don't have that kind of money and down in the basement we have some old green screen apple ][ monitors. Programmers just look at text anyway right?
I have a business meeting in cancun, and will be out of the office for three weeks...
No. They are $500. It's right in the article.
Here. Buy one.
http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra/dp/B00DOPGO2G
At $500 a piece
we had been using antiquated pairs of 19-inch monitors. An upgrade was needed
It's amazing how irrelevant many comments become after you RTFA.
Bingo. My first thought when I read TFS was "my neck hurts already."
4K is for sprendthrifts.
Most developers these days run dual- or triple-screen setups with at least 22" monitors; the edge-to-edge width of that would be larger than that of one single 40" 4K screen -- albeit with much less vertical resolution.
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.
Plus, as I said in another post, arranging windows is easier on multiple monitors
That's a flaw in your window manager. Tiling window managers work well for this.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If you really like large workspaces, you may like future generations of the Oculus Rift displays.
Once they get the latencies really low, fix the image quality issues (and maybe reduce the weight - no one's complained yet but maybe for hours of work they might), you'd have as big a "screen" as you can manage.
Check this out: http://gizmodo.com/i-wore-the-new-oculus-rift-and-i-never-want-to-look-at-1496569598
Then imagine you are looking at huge virtual workspaces as large and as many as you can handle. Even better if there's tech to fade in and out of virtual/actual reality without removing the goggles - so you can do augmented reality, switch to full virtual or full "real world".
So I'm not really that excited by these large high res physical screens. To me we should already have had high res screens a decade ago, but we were stuck on or even regressed to crappy resolutions for too long.
Yes I'm impatient- I'm not getting any younger and it's disappointing to know that so many things should already be possible but aren't implemented yet.
My "workstation" is a seven year old laptop that I can buy on eBay for $50. I make more than that per hour. I've offered to bring in my own hardware, but - no unapproved hardware on the network. And no admin rights, because, you know, I might break my $50 PC, so if I need to change an environment variable it's a week wait for a helpdesk maggot to show up.
It's just a side effect of senior management not having a clue as to what we do and seeing developers as nothing more than a cost.
:wq
KDE 4 has a nice take on the Windows 7 snap feature. Drag a window to a corner and it will take up that quarter of the screen. Drag to a side and it will take up that half. and drag to top to full screen.
I primarily use the half-screen option but with 4k I could easily see myself doing 1/4 window apps.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Time to look for a better job, without a doubt! I'm a bit annoyed with substandard hardware here, but it's not anywhere near that bad!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Why the fuck are you still there?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Yeah, because they have a 30Hz refresh rate. No thanks!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Making more than 50$/hour ?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
for $50. I make more than that per hour.
I'd put up with a lot for that.
$500 is like 3 days pay... Or pocket change compared to the cost if wages and benifits.
I see this being super productive for "cloud" administration as well. When I was doing Blade server admin, I'd have one or two windows open for the OS partition(s), one for working with the SAN storage, one for toggling optical/tape media in the media server, and one for the VIO server to manage the hardware... Fitting it all on one screen would be really efficient.
I had the same problem until I went for 0% PWM. I never get headaches and eye strain anymore. Try it out.
A PWM should never reach 100% since that means it has run out of headroom to adjust to input voltage fluctuations and therefore cannot regulate output anymore. A plain backlight PWM will be firing at well over 1kHz, far beyond anything the human eye could possibly detect and with LED-based backlights, the PWM's output may very well be filtered to DC current. On a display with Lightboost enabled though, the strobe rate is proportional to vsync and could yield perceivable flicker.
With my camera on 1/800s shutter speed, I'm not managing to capture any signs of flicker on my LED-lit LCD set at 20% brightness, which tells me either the pulse rate is much higher than that (otherwise I would have wild fluctuations in brightness between shots depending on the -1/0/+1 pulses in a given exposure) or the backlight LEDs are receiving filtered output from the PWM. (Most likely both since it is much easier and cheaper to filter higher frequency PWM output and it eliminates the need to shield the LED array for EMI compliance.)
you don't need a beefy PSU just because you are doing 2d, modern graphic cards are very energy efficient and if you are not playing games they are not going to suck 300W. You also don't need a top of the line graphics card if you're not playing games, as far as I know you can drive 4k off a GT 640 which is only $100.
The article is about text editing / web development it seems, if it was about 3d or video then I would agree.
-- the cake is a lie
I only need eye movement to go from corner to corner on my 24" LCD but I usually sit at 30-36" since any closer than that strains my eyes when I have my glasses on.
Peripheral vision is somewhat rubbish for reading or writing: put your mouse pointer in a random location, then focus your eyes on it and try to see how many words around the pointer you are able to read without moving your head or eyes off the mouse pointer... the ability to recognize stuff like letters drops off sharply beyond 10-15 degrees from the focal point. You are still aware of everything in peripheral vision, particularly movement, but will need to move your focal point to whatever drew attention from your peripheral vision to positively identify it if you have doubts about your guess at what it may have been.
As others have said, the biggest benefit to having larger, higher-resolution displays for professionals is to have more information available on-screen instead of having to tab through dozens of open windows to find the one you need every few minutes. That alone saves me several minutes per day and also spares my wrists that much extra tabbing/mousing. Having the specs for a chip I'm trying to interface to a FPGA open on one screen while I write documentation or HDL code on the other screen (or open side by side if I had one higher-res screen) makes me at least 30% more productive for those sorts of tasks than if I had to constantly tab between the two/three.
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.
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.
You're arguing with someone that has a Slashdot ID almost 2 orders of magnitude lower than yours.
I'm going to put this into a language you can understand:
LOL N00B
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Nu-uh, the hookers pay for themselves - it's the blow!
Requiem for the American Dream