Third, screen real estate matters. The traditional “everything is a file” approach is wonderfully portable. You can build an environment for working with files even for a very small display. Heck, you can work with files if all you have is a line-mode terminal. But flexibly arranged code snippets and fully interactive graphical debuggers require a lot of pixels.
I'd go even further. Programming requires a lot of pixels. You want to look at as much code as possible no matter what. Maybe a 10' x 10' screen would be enough but otherwise, there's no limit to what I want for myself, not for some GUI eye-candy. As another post says Editing is not secondary but for me its a matter of never, ever crowding my precious screen real estate, ever.
But by that token, anytime someone tells you their application needs lots of screen real estate is a time when they're admitting they'll waste that real estate doing something I don't care about.
I wonder if that really is the case? Are there any useful experiments done comparing screen size?
I would have two questions:
1) how much screen size is ideal?
2) are there better ways to deal with information display than large screens?
I use laptops a lot. I have used 17" laptops and now I have a small one. I don't feel that productive on the small screen. That's subjective.
I use an external screen. A 30" screen. Am I more productive?
On larger screens my main field of view is not much larger. I have to move the head to see things at the edges.
One thing which might be more productive is instant switching between contexts on the screen. For example switching between a debugger view and an editing sessions easily and fast. That might be better on a certain screen size, than having both the debug and edit version on the same screen - but each smaller. Sometimes programmers add another monitor, so they can put these things on different monitors. But is it really better to look to another monitor, instead of just switching the context on the one you are currently looking at?
You know, I really don't know whether more screen space makes you more productive. I actually suspect that question matter less than you'd think in terms of the question at hand (whether "visual" workspace will be accepted by programmers).
I was simply saying that I and I suspect many typical programmers want this screen space and will become annoyed at programs which stand against it. IE, put a widget between me and the data I really want and you'll soon see me not using your application. Will this preference make me more or less productive? That's a further question.
On the other hand, I happen to think a second monitor is a great recipe for disabling neck injuries. But that is my rather particular view based on my studies of effective and ineffective postures.
I'm a big-screen skeptic. An art in programming is abstraction, enabling you to grasp complexity in small pieces. Seeing more doesn't enable me to grasp more.
(There are non-code exceptions: rendered output, docs, etc)
Third, screen real estate matters. The traditional “everything is a file” approach is wonderfully portable. You can build an environment for working with files even for a very small display. Heck, you can work with files if all you have is a line-mode terminal. But flexibly arranged code snippets and fully interactive graphical debuggers require a lot of pixels.
I'd go even further. Programming requires a lot of pixels. You want to look at as much code as possible no matter what. Maybe a 10' x 10' screen would be enough but otherwise, there's no limit to what I want for myself, not for some GUI eye-candy. As another post says Editing is not secondary but for me its a matter of never, ever crowding my precious screen real estate, ever.
But by that token, anytime someone tells you their application needs lots of screen real estate is a time when they're admitting they'll waste that real estate doing something I don't care about.