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Blurts on the Art of Software Development

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I have two monitors hooked up to a Matrox graphics card at work. Sometimes I feel like I couldn't live without the 2nd monitor, and sometimes I feel like I'm just causing myself neck pains (since the desk doesn't facilitate placing the monitors in any ergonomic way...). The latter point of view seems to be dominant nowadays.

Still, when I see something like this or this, I feel an unimaginable itch to run to the nearest geek heaven and make my credit card squeal like a pig...

...and then, of course, I remember the old 800MHz Linux box I have lying around un-plugged that I really should hook up, upgrade the OS, and spend any spare moments (including the hours when 99,5% of the local population is sound asleep) with tweaking the crontab and init files. It's got a 14" monitor. I can't believe I've actually coded with that thing not so many years ago.


That second pic, is it two machines with three monitors each or one machine with six monitors? Talk about extreme multitasking. Since I'm cheap, I go the other way: one monitor for multiple PCs.
At work I have 3 big monitors side by side hooked up to three seperate boxes. Home I just have 2 monitors and 2 computers. Someone threw another monitor into my cube today only if I had another video card. I want to do a multi-monitor display once i get the money. Make it easier to program and see the results without maximizing and minimizing 1000's of times.
Hi Lasse,
I only have one monitor. :( Its pretty much due to desktop real estate and the fact that I work about half my time away from my (home) office on a laptop. When I first started professional programming it was making things for Windows 3.0. It was pretty much necessary to have a 14" primary monitor and a monochrome 12" secondary monitor on which the debugger would run.
I especially liked what I saw in the first Matrix movie. But my ultimate configuration will probably be the one I saw in Swordfish ;) I can't find a picture on the web except this one which has been taken from behind, but if you have seen the movie, you'll know what I'm talking about ;)
That Matrix thing is certainly closing in on the "better than sex" milestone :)
Biggest system I've seen pictures of was 11 screens on 6 PCs all operating as a cluster. Biggest I've seen myself had 4 screens on 2 machines as a cluster plus 2 laptops sitting on the sides. Myself I tried to get a second screen set up on my machine but it didn't work (the screen wasn't recognised as being installed on the second output) so I make do with a single screen and a networked laptop.