1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display)

2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plugging in a 1080p monitor. Also good luck having anyone's random spare monitor be 4k.

3. Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming. I use i3 and it adds way more productivity to my workflow than "My fonts are almost imperceptively sharper" ever could

My setup is 2x24" 1920x1200 monitors - so I get slightly more vertical pixels than true 1080p, but in the form of screen real estate rather than improved density. I also have 20/20 vision as of the last time I was tested.

My argument in favor of 1080p is that I find text to just be... completely readable. At various sizes, in various fonts, whatever syntax highlighting colors you want to use. Can you see the pixels in the font on my 24" 1080p monitor if you put your face 3" from the screen? Absolutely. Do I notice them day to day? Absolutely not.

I genuinely think 4k provides no real benefit to me as a developer unless the screen is 27" or higher, because increased pixel density just isn't required. If more pixels meant slightly higher density but also came with more usable screen real estate, that'd be what made the difference for me.

You lost me right here on line 1.

If there are apps on MacOS that can't handle high dpi mode, I haven't run into them as a developer (or doing photo editing, video editing, plus whatever other hobbies I do). Also, I don't have any trouble with plugging my highDPI MacBook into a crappy 1080p display at work.

> 3. Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming.

Things like this are exactly why I left Linux for MacOS. I absolutely get why you might want to stick with Linux, but this is a Linux + HighDPI issue (maybe a Windows + highDPI issue also), not a general case.

> I genuinely think 4k provides no real benefit to me as a developer unless the screen is 27" or higher, because increased pixel density just isn't required.

You could say the same for any arbitrary DPI; 96dpi isn't "Required", we got by fine with 72dpi. It's all about ergonomics as far as I'm concerned.

I'm on Windows and can confirm 1. is an issue. Windows lets users scale UIs to be readable at high DPI on small screens. Doesn't work on all UIs (e.g. QGIS). So maybe not all OS's, but two important ones.

> You could say the same for any arbitrary DPI; 96dpi isn't "Required", we got by fine with 72dpi. It's all about ergonomics as far as I'm concerned.

I think the point the parent is making is that human vision has limited resolution. I.e. for a given screen size & distance from the screen, you cannot notice any difference in DPI past a point. The parent is suggesting that 1080p & 27" with a typical viewing distance is already higher resolution than the eye can resolve. Looking at my 1080p 27" screen from a metre away with 20/20 vision I am inclined to agree!

Are you sure you have 20/20 vision? I can absolutely resolve individual pixels with zero effort whatsoever on 1080p 27-inch displays.

Back when I had a 27-inch 1080p display at work, my MacBook's 13-inch Retina Display effectively became my main monitor. The 27-inch monitor was relegated to displaying documentation and secondary content, because I found its low resolution totally eye straining

Edit: I might have found it so eye straining because MacOS does not support sub pixel rendering. That means a lot of people will need a 4K or Retina monitor to have a comfortable viewing experience on the Mac.

You can still turn it on although it requires the command line.

That combined with the fairly massive software complexity of subpixel rendering is probably why mac dropped it.

If you can't see the difference between 4k and 1080p on a 24" monitor, then you probably need reading glasses. On a 27" monitor it's even worse. It's not so much that you can "see" the pixels, sub pixel rendering and anti-aliasing go a long way to making the actual blocky pixels go away, the difference is crisp letters versus blurry ones.

Maybe, just maybe, one could talk about how crisp text appears on 4k _without_ being rude.

Haven't seen any scaling issues on Windows in years. Last time was Inkscape but they fixed that.

I know my company's ones do.

I've now reverted to RDP-ing from my old laptop, and using the newer one for video calls, scrum boards, Spotify and other stuff that doesn't require a VPN connection or access to my dev machine. It mostly works OK in that configuration.

I've seen other weird things happen when using other Terminal Services clients, though.

Low DPI monitors are pretty much unusable since MacOS dropped subpixel rendering - with fonts being a blurry mess. You can only really use MacOS with high DPI monitors now for all day working. It’s a huge problem for everyone I know who wants to plug their MacBook into a normal DPI display. Not that the subpixel/hinting was ever that good - Linux has always had much better font rendering in my opinion across a wider range of displays.

Nonsense, fonts look fine on non-Retina monitors; they were fine on my old 24" 1920x1200 monitor and are fine on my new 27" 2560x1440 one. Can I see a difference if I drag window from the external monitor to the built-in Retina display? Yes, but text is not blurry at all on the external monitor.

If it matters, "Use font smoothing when available" is checked in System Preferences (which only appears to have an effect on the Retina display, not the monitor).

As an aside, I wonder whether the article's explanation of how font hinting works -- I confess for all these years I didn't know the point of "hinting" was to make sure that fonts lined up with a rasterized grid! -- explains why I always found fonts to look a little worse on Windows than MacOS. Not less legible -- arguably hinted fonts are less "fuzzy" than non-hinted fonts on lower-resolution screens, which (I presume) is what people who prefer hinted fonts prefer about them -- but just a little off at smaller sizes. The answer is because they literally are off at smaller sizes.

[1]: https://www.freetype.org/freetype2/docs/subpixel-hinting.htm...

What does not work perfect is mixing hidpi and lowdpi screens. On wayland with wayland compatible apps it works fine but on X11 or with xwayland apps like electron it will not scale properly when you move the window to the other screen, it will scale to one screen and be wrong when moved over. Overall I don't find this to be too much of an issue and when chrome gets proper wayland support the problem will be 99% solved.

It's good to hear things aren't as bad as some have suggested.

PyCharm had high CPU consumption issues with a Macbook connected to a 4k display running in a scaled resolution. Native 4k was fine, using the default resolution was fine but "more space" made it use tons of CPU since it had to rescale text and UI elements on the CPU.

There is an option to change the scale manually (-Dsun.java2d.uiScale=<floating point value> in the JVM rags), but I don’t know if it helps or not.

It's why I actively avoid monitors with small pixels. My trusty old Dell U3011 and the two rotated 1600x1200's flanking it suit me just fine.

I've no inclination to change my OS, either, just for the sake of fonts.

Kudos to those commenters still on CRT displays. One complaint I have with LCD's is reset lag time, which can make it tricky to catch early BIOS messages.

I think the problem is right there. You’re living in the past so you get the past’s problem.

I haven’t seen a BIOS message in a decade.

I’m sure those U3011 are beautiful and hard to let go (I used to have a U27) but it’s also hard to look at a low-dpi screen once you’ve seen the light

BTW what's wrong with BIOS or UEFI messages? I much prefer them to cosmetic boot graphics.

In fact historically, some of the higher-end hardware yielding the best performance during operation (an axis along which I optimize) actually added time to the boot sequence. The storage subsystem on my workstation is backed by a mix of four Intel enterprise-grade SSD's in RAID-0 (raw speed) and 8 big spinning platters in RAID-6 (capacity), plugged into an Areca 1882ix RAID card w/ 4GB dedicated BBU cache. Unfortunately that card adds a non-bypassable 30 seconds to the boot sequence, no matter what system you plug it into. But once there, it screams. It's only just the last couple years PCI-NVMe drives have come out that can match (or finally beat) the performance metrics I've been hitting for ages.

So I actually kind of feel like I've been living in the future, and the rest of the world just caught up ;-).

Same. I haven’t run into any apps that don’t support high dpi mode. Even terminal apps look great on my Retina 4k iMac screen.

Before getting this machine nearly a year ago, I couldn't natively view high dpi graphics for web projects I’d work on, which was a problem since there are billions of high dpi devices out there.

Added bonus: wide gamut is a thing and there's increasing support for this in browsers, including new color spaces: https://lea.verou.me/2020/04/lch-colors-in-css-what-why-and-...

The version of pgAdmin not based on electron had pixelated fonts on a 5k iMac. I haven't checked recently.

Audacity has extremely low framerates and chugging when interacting with the waveform on retina screens. Even running in low DPI mode doesn't fix it. Only runs nice on non-retina displays.

The post I quoted was: "No matter what operating system you're on". I quoted that particular bit for a reason.

The ergonomics of better screen resolution don't change just because your OS isn't good at dealing with high resolution.

When you pick an operating system (if you have the choice), there are a lot of factors, it's good to know what's important to you and choose appropriately.

It's almost as if there's more operating systems than MacOS...

I either need a bigger (deeper) desk to sit back farther or just a smaller monitor physically with the same resolution.

I also was thinking I didn't particularly like the large desktop and screen at first, but now that I treat it as a combined wallboard and desk space, I can't imagine going back (and using the large but not quite 4k monitor at my desk at the office always felt like a step backwards).

I do set default scaling for Firefox and Thunderbird to be about 125% of normal though, as I don't like squinting at small text. I generally like how small all the other OS widgets are though, so I don't scale the whole desktop.

It has been an iterative process but I’m getting a handle on it.

I have a sit/stand desk, I’m considering moving my recliner in to the office and elevating the monitor. Working from a reclined position seems ideal but I also thought a 43” monitor was a good idea...

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modul...

For example, Super + Up Arrow will move a window into the central third section of the display. Pressing it again will expand the window a little bit.

Nice and simple. Makes working with large displays pleasant.

I cannot imagine using a large display without it!

To be honest, I think I may stick to it. At first, the huge monitor was fun, and initial change to having less screen real estate was definitely a drag. But, now that I'm accustomed to it again, I'm finding that "I can fit less stuff on the screen at once" is just another way of saying, "it's harder to distract myself with extra stuff on the screen." My productivity is possibly up, and certainly no worse.

Also for my particular workload real estate is very handy. I totally agree with there being some virtue to constraints but several times a day I really need the space.

At typical desk monitor distances you shouldn't be able to see distinct pixels anyway.

My previous monitor iterations have been LGs and I really like the USB-C charging capability, KVM and the OSD/buttons.

Got one of these in my cart right now: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07NS7JKJH

I'm gonna sleep on it and double check the return policy on this 43".

Pretty much no maintstream UX has properly solve the large screen problem and instead we have to workaround it with smaller, multiple monitors.

It’s quite a piece of hardware. It lets me plug a USB hub into it. It supports USB-C for its display adapter. So it’s the dream: one USB-C cable to charge the laptop, drive the display, and provide a USB hub for keyboard, mouse, etc.

I do find my head is on a swivel comparatively, but while noticeable without being a negative. Overall I like it. A lot. The only thing that is painful is sharing the desktop over Webex/skype. That does bog the system down and requires manual resizing of font size to inflate it so that viewers on lower resolution systems can cope with it.

I actually evolved my office setup from dual 24" 1920x1200 and went to dual 28" 4K. But with the COVID lockdown, I only have one of the same spec monitor at home for several months, and realize that I barely miss the second monitor. I was probably only using 1.25 monitors in practice as the real estate is vast.

People who complain that a monitor is too large should stop opening a single window full-screen and discover what it is like to have a windowing system...

Interesting idea thought just effectively having a massive monitor.

It basically works out as 4 seamless 1080p monitors, and I use i3 for a 3x2 window layout

In my experience MacOS multi-monitor support is effectively non-existent.

Recently I picked up a 49” ultra-ultra wide monitor (basically 2x27” panels). It is one monitor but MacOS can’t drive it. They just don’t detect that resolution. I switched to a 43” 4k monitor (technically more pixels) and MacOS drives it fine.

My experience with MacOS is not “it just works” unless you are doing something Apple already predicted. That’s fine for me, I just wish they still sold a reasonable monitor themselves so I could be assured it would work properly.

I finally got sick of this and wrote a Hammerspoon script to deal with this. The config looks like this:

      local dualLayout = {
          {"Firefox",       nil,         primary,   topLeft,             nil, nil},
          {"Preview",       nil,         primary,   topLeft,             nil, nil},
          {"Sublime Text",  nil,         secondary, topHalf,             nil, nil},
          {"Slack",         nil,         secondary, topRight,            nil, nil},
          {"Notes",         nil,         secondary, topRight,            nil, nil},
          {"iTerm2",        nil,         secondary, topRight,            nil, nil},
          {"Safari",        nil,         secondary, topRight,            nil, nil},
          {"IntelliJ IDEA", "cursive",   primary,   hs.layout.maximized, nil, nil},
          {"IntelliJ IDEA", "community", secondary, hs.layout.maximized, nil, nil},
      }

I tend to have one space per task and have at least a Firefox and an iTerm on every one.

Just running a single monitor is the way to go for me. The benefits of multiple monitors just doesn't make up for all the fiddling.

Maybe we can get to the bottom of this. What is your use case?

I ask because as long as I plug them into the same ports it remembers how I arranged them previously (2018 macbook pro 15"). I haven't had to arrange them in over a year... even remembered when updating to latest operating system. Occasionally, I even plug in my LCD TV as a third external monitor and it remembers where that one should go in the arrangement too.

The fact that it was all one physical monitor may have further confused the OS as a sibling comment mentions.

The solution was to sell the monitor to a Windows-using architect friend and buy a different panel with a resolution MacOS supports. She has a macbook too but it's the fancy one with discrete graphics which can drive 5120x1440.

The value proposition of MacOS to me is that I plug things in and they work. Any fiddling beyond that destroys the benefits of using this platform. I'm willing to iterate on hardware until I find something that works.

For other readers, this is not technically correct. The 2020 13” MacBook Pro can drive the Pro Display XDR with its integrated Intel graphics.

This limitation is specific to the MacOS drivers. Windows in Bootcamp is able to drive 5120x1440 on these devices.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/221498 and https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/233854 has how to fix this. It doesn't sound much fun though.

I have two different monitors that wake up at very different speeds and it's no problem here. My 15" 2013 and 2015 macbook pros had no problem with this either, and I've had 4 different monitors in the mix through those years too. I've transitioned to a CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 dock now and still no problem with it remembering.

So there's definitely something unique about that monitor. That is sad news for me too -- I'm hoping they make a 2x4K ultra wide monitor like that someday. Hopefully they've solved this problem by then.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210205

I currently have the Apple LG 4K but plan to upgrade to the 5K.

I agree with you on the just works thing. I have the same keyboard, trackball, monitor, tbolt dock and external HD on my desk at home and work.

At least for apps that are dedicated to one screen + virtual desktop, right click its icon in the dock and assign it to that display and workspace.

Note that the effectiveness of window restoration also depends on the make/model of your monitors – many manufacturers incorrectly share EDID's across all units of the same model and sometimes across multiple models, making it much more difficult for operating systems to uniquely identify them.

I'm thinking of flipping my monitor upside down so I'll never accidentally brush that area while picking up something on the table.

Reports I read stated that while you can select it with SwitchResX it was scaled.

I never tried installing it myself because I’m not a fan of modifying the system on a Mac, especially one I don’t own.

From my poking around I think the horizontal resolution is the problem. The system scans possible resolutions to see what works. Apple just never expected a single display that wide.

There’s some reports that newer MacBooks with discrete graphics on Catalina can indeed run this resolution. It used to not work regardless of hardware, now apparently discrete graphics MacBooks can run it. Maybe because they updated the drivers/system for their new super fancy monitors.

macOS Mojave 10.14.6

MacBook Pro 15” 2019

Radeon Pro 555X

Intel UHD 630

I’ve seen zero reports of anyone successfully running 5120x1440 using Intel graphics.

As far as I can tell it is the same as Option-clicking on scaled in the display preferences.

I was plagued with performance problems, mostly in IntelliJ, until I realized it didn't work well with scaling. Going to native resolution solved it.

The worst thing about it is that scaling seems to use more CPU than running natively and the OS has some noticeably additional latency when running scaled.

At work I have a mac mini and a Windows box, and I use three crapola Asus monitors between them, and my impression has been that macOS does a better job rendering text on said crapola monitors (the Windows box does a better job at compiling C++ in a timely fashion, though, so I mostly work on that one).

But yes, I didn't know that they ripped out subpixel rendering in late 2018 by default.

In general with a HiDPI screen I don't find any need for it. But on a low-res display like the typical 24" 1080P models it certainly helps.

I would also add, when it comes to 4K and, for example, MacBooks, things fall apart quickly in my opinion. Cables, adapters/dongles/docking stations just must match up for everything to work in proper 60fps, and it gets worse if you have two external displays.

As for my home set up, also stayed at 25" 1440p. Nice balance for work, hobby and occasional gaming without braking the bank for a top-tier GPU.

I agree it's a bit of a mess, but USB-C monitors solve all those issues. I just plug my MacBook in with USB-C, and instantly my 4K (60 Hz) display is connected, along with external sound and any USB peripherals. No fussing with a million different cables and adapters. It's the docking workstation setup I've dreamed of for a decade.

This seems like a long-standing problem with Linux, rather than a reason to dislike high-res screens.

What is the software that people are using that creates problems?

  # This affects every GTK app. 
  xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Xft/DPI -s 144

What is really tricky, though, it's having two monitors with different DPI. Win 10 does an acceptable job with it; no Linux tools I'm aware of can handle it reasonably well. Some xrandr incantations can offer partial solutions.

This is a non issue to me. I don't use apps half way across 2 screens. Its just a minor bit of weirdness while dragging them.

I'm running a couple medium high density monitors alongside one of the highest density ones available. I don't scale the HIDPI monitor at all, which means when I drag windows to it they are tiny. Instead it works in two ways, as a status screen for activity monitors/etc and as a text/document editing screen. AKA putting adobe acrobat, firefox or sublime/emacs/etc on the high DPI screen and then zooming in gives all the font smoothing/etc advantages of high DPI without needing OS support.

So the TLDR is, turn off dpi scaling, and leave the hidpi screen as a dedicated text editor/etc with the font sizes bumped to a comfortable size. Bonus here is that the additional effort of clicking the menu/etc will encourage learning keyboard shortcuts.

I don't think the reasons you illustrated support that conclusion. You don't actively dislike the extra pixel density of a 4K display. You seem to only dislike the compatibility issues relevant to your use case.

>No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode.

FWIW, I can't recall the last time I has a problem with apps not rendering correctly in hidpi mode on MacOS. Unless you've got a very specific legacy app that you rely on for regular use it's a non-issue.

>Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming

Ah, I think I found the real issue ;-) If your linux desktop rendered 4K beautifully, seamlessly, and without any scaling issues right out of the box, I could all but guarantee that your opinion would be different.

> My argument in favor of 1080p is that I find text to just be... completely readable.

Yes, me too. To me it's more than just readable, I find the text crisp and comfortable. I don't need anything else.

Primary apps go in the middle, such as code editor, etc.. Tertiary windows, such as documentation go on the outer edges. Still quite usable, but a little out of the way for extended reading.

I like Retina DPI, but this is good enough. It’s not very curved, but it has some curvature. I don’t think it’s worth it. 1440p is good enough for me.

There’s only two or three things that would make this better. A high DPI variant, more vertical space and a greater refresh rate. Given those two things, I think that’s the endgame for monitors (in a productivity context).

(I think that’s 8x the bandwidth so it’s a while away!)

I do agree with you that 4K under 27” isn’t necessary.

What issues actually? Xmonad on Arch user here and I find the sweet spot for me is 27-32" 4k, 1440p on laptop (I guess 4k would be nice here too, but not sure if it motivates the increased power draw). After getting used to the increased real-estate, I do feel limited on my older 1080p laptop screen; fonts smaller than 8p (which is still all good) noticably impacts the readability to the point I can feel my eyes strain faster. It did take a bit of playing around with Dpi settings to get it right, though, out of the box it's not great. The Arch wiki has some great material.

The only frustration I do have (which IS super-frustrating, specifically for web browsing) is with multi-monitor setups with different pixel density - your point 2, I guess. Even plugging anything larger than 19" with 1080p into my 1080p Thinkpad is annoying.

I think it should be possible to configure it correctly but I just gave up and end up zooming in/out whenever I do this and send windows between screens. Haven't looked at it, but maybe a mature DE like KDE or GNOME (which, if you don't know, you can still use with i3) should be able to take care of this.

Also, this is all on X11, have no idea if and how wayland differs.

So I had a '14 13"(? Might have been 15" but probably not) RMBP on the left with email and chat stuff, 24" main monitor in landscape and then another 24" monitor in portrait on the right. I think at some point I put a newer panel on the IBM mount. It was sweet.

Back then we still had desktop PCs at our actual desks so there was a KVM on the main monitor! What a time to be alive!

These days I do prefer a single monitor workflow if possible. It's just cleaner and move convenient.

Plus, if I take a working vacation somewhere it's a lot more practical to schlep around one 24" or 27" than an ultrawide.

Also, just as an ergonomic thing, I could angle in the two outer screens a bit while not having one of those icky curved screens.

I'm working on an old 24"16/10 display (the venerable ProLite B2403WS) and an OK 32" 4K display with a VA panel. Both are properly calibrated.

There is no amount of tinkering that can make fonts on the 24" look good. It looks like dog shit in comparison to the 4K screen. It might not be obvious when all you got in front of your eyes is the 24" display, but it's blatant side to side.

On top of it, the real life vertical real estate of the 4K display is also quite larger.

I've never been a big 16/9 fan, but frankly at the size monitors come in today and the market prices, I don't a reason not to pick a few of these for developing.

I haven't had this experience (MacOS, 4K monitor for 2.5 years)

> 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plugging in a 1080p monitor. Also good luck having anyone's random spare monitor be 4k.

shrug - 4K and 1080p seem to work together just fine for me. I've currently got a 27" 4K monitor and a 24" 1080p monitor both running off my 2015 13" MacBook Pro; the 4K is on DisplayPort (60Hz @ 3840x2160) and the 1080p is on HDMI (and it happens to be in portrait mode). I use all three screens (including the laptop's), and while the 1080p is noticeably crappier than the other two, it's still usable, and the combination of all three together works well for me. A couple of extra tools (e.g. BetterTouchTool) really help with throwing things between monitors, resizing them to take up some particular chunk of the screen, etc. - my setup's quite keyboard-heavy with emphasis on making full use of the space inspired by years of running i3 (and before that xmonad, ratpoison and others) on linux and freebsd.

> 3. Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming.

That's a statement about linux and i3, not monitors. (And again, I like i3, but stating this limitation as if it's a problem with monitors not i3 seems... odd.)

> That's a statement about linux and i3, not monitors. (And again, I like i3, but stating this limitation as if it's a problem with monitors not i3 seems... odd.)

It is also wrong. I am a long time i3 user. Never had a problem with it, never done anything special. Most of the time I'm running Debian stable, so I even use software versions that most people consider 'old'.

Never happened to me in 4 years, see below. That said, I barely use any graphical programs besides kitty, firefox, thunderbird and spotify.

> 3. Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming. I use i3 and it adds way more productivity to my workflow than "My fonts are almost imperceptively sharper" ever could

This is just not true. I have used the same 32" 4k monitor for 4 years running NixOS with bspwm (a tiling window manager, which does even less than i3) on 3 different laptops - thinkpad x230 (at 30 Hz), x260 and x395 and it all worked completely fine.

I used a script like this to setup monitors, I would run it every time I would change my monitor setup (e.g. on the go): https://github.com/rvolosatovs/infrastructure/blob/0e17a1421...

It depends on a very simple tool I wrote, because I was sick with `xrandr`: https://github.com/rvolosatovs/gorandr , but `xrandr` could easily be used as alternative.

Recently I switched to Sway on Wayland and it could not be smoother - everything just works with no scripting, including hot-plug.

> I genuinely think 4k provides no real benefit to me as a developer unless the screen is 27" or higher, because increased pixel density just isn't required. If more pixels meant slightly higher density but also came with more usable screen real estate, that'd be what made the difference for me.

Indeed, screen size is way more important than resolution. In fact, even 4k at 27" seemed too small for me when I had to use that in the office - I would either have to deal with super small font sizes and straining my eyes or sacrificing screen space by zooming in.

I have been running two 1440p displays on a 4K retina MBP and the experience has been impressively seamless. Both with Catalina (the latest) and High Sierra

The biggest problem is with Apple port splitters; they are crap and sometimes monitors wake from sleep with a garbled picture

Since aging has forced me into wearing reading glasses, I wear single vision computer glasses that are optimized for the distance range of my monitors' closest and furthest points.

Because I dont have scaling enabled, I don't get any of the HiDpi issues that I've gotten on my laptops with Windows.

I have found that I am still wanting for even more screen real estate, and for a time I had a pair of ultrawide 23" monitors underneath my main monitors, but it created more problems than it solved and I recently went back to only two monitors.

Because I prefer to use the same model of monitor when doing a grid, so I don't think I want to add to my existing setup, because my monitors are discontinued, and they're displayport only for 4K60.

I think they have more than a few years of life left in them, but I'll definitely look into a configuration like yours at upgrade time.

A 4k monitor is now $300 (new). Used are even cheaper.

> Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming. I use i3 and it adds way more productivity to my workflow

I use Gnome 3.36 and many HiDPI issues I was having before are now gone, without any extra configuration.

> My argument in favor of 1080p is that I find text to just be... completely readable.

It is readable but fonts are pixelated, unlike 4k.

My only problem is that macOS has some artificial limitations when it comes to using non-Apple monitors. Like a lower refresh rate. My solution? Use Linux.

What do you mean, fonts are pixelated at 1080p? Whether you can see the pixels probably depends on pixel size. I certainly can't see them on my 23" LG monitor unless I try really hard.

I am using using Emacs and tmux under Linux, in the Gnome desktop. Gnome has HDPI scaling. For me, that works fine with a 4K 43 inch display. The thing you need to watch out for is to get a graphics card with proper open source (FOSS) driver support. Some cards are crap and don't come with FOSS drivers. You can get them to run but it is a PITA on every kernel update. Don't do that to yourself, get a decent card.

I did a lot of research before buying an xps-13 and went with the 1080p version due to basically all the reasons you just stated + poor battery life and video performance.

I have hope for the future though... what would really make transitioning easier is a way to automatically upscale incompatible programs, even if it means nearest neighbor scaling at least it will make them usable on super hi-dpi monitors.

I still switched to 1440p as 4K is just better looking 1080p. You cannot fit more information on the screen with scaling and without scaling everything is too small. I work as backend developer so space is more important for me than visual quality.

Happy i3 arch linux 4k monitor user here for over 2 years. I only set an appropriate Xft.dpi for my monitor size/resolution in ~/.Xresources once and that was it.

Can't imagine being easier than this tbh.

Or, if you are using decent graphics hardware, you could even get two of them and have four times more display space than you have now.

It might depend on the program, too. Some might only work in pixels. Fortunately, it is usually not a problem if you are trying to run a program designed for Gameboy; the emulator should be able to scale it automatically, subject to the user setting. I don't know if any X server has a setting to magnify mouse cursor shapes, but it seems like it should be possible to implement in the X server. Also, it seems like SDL 1.x has no environment variable to magnify the image. My own program Free Hero Mesh (which I have not worked on in a while, because I am working on other stuff) allows icons to be of any size up to 255x255 pixels (the puzzle set can contain icons of any square size up to 255x255, and may have multiple sizes; it will try to find the best size based on the user setting, using integer scaling to grow them if necessary), but currently is limited to a single built-in 8x8 font for text. If someone ports it to a library that does allow zooming, then that might help, too. However, it is not really designed for high DPI displays, and it might not be changed unless someone with a high DPI display wants to use it and modifies the program to support a user option for scaling text too (and possibly also scaling icons to a bigger size than 255x255) (then I might merge their changes, possibly).

Still, I don't need 4K. The size I have is fine, but unfortunately too many things use big text; some web pages zoom text by viewport size, which I hate, and a bigger monitor would then just make it worse.

Not that it excuses bad UX, but you might consider keeping your browser window at something below full width. I find this more comfortable anyway.

Total aside: I've noticed Windows and Linux users tend to keep their windows fully maximized, whereas Mac users don't. Doesn't apply to everyone of course, but enough to be noticed. This was true even before Apple changed the behavior of the green Zoom button, and I've always wondered why.

Also any power user that cares will use a tool like Divvy on macOS for arranging windows with hotkeys.

Alt-tab goes between applications

Interesting, I've noticed the exact opposite. Mac devs, especially younger ones, tend to have full-screen IDEs and browsers and constantly flick back and forth between apps. My theory was always that Windows and Linux users had gotten comfortable with the desktop metaphor while a large percentage of newer Mac users grew up using iPads which were all full-screen, all the time.

It used to be that if you clicked the green button on Mac, most apps (not all apps, for weird aqua-UI reasons, but certainly web browsers) would grow to fill the screen without outright hiding the menu bar and dock, just like the maximize button on Windows.

To this day I still rarely press that button because of years of it doing nothing but unpredictable nonsense.

Could you clarify when in your life you've had a 4k screen with good OS support, so that we know what experience you are speaking from when you say that?

But I do agree with points 1 and 2 (they tend to work better on windows, though).

On the other hand, what about 3? I would find it ridiculous that it'll take you more than 5 seconds to enlarge DPI (no multi-monitor) even on the weirdest of X11 WMs. X11 is designed for this....

I think three monitors is distracting, but that whole community discussion gave me the opportunity to compare how I use a multi-monitor setup compared to others.

I generally dislike how fonts are rendered at floating-point scaling or lower resolutions, but I too just learned to live with it over years of ignoring it. Unfortunately, now I can't unsee it!

Could you elaborate on this? Specifically, do you feel that having three/multiple monitors is necessarily distracting (no matter what you do with them) or just encourages distraction?

My experience is the latter, and that if I am disciplined and only put windows from one task at a time on all three, then I have no more temptation to be distracted than I usually have at my internet-enabled glowbox, but maybe I'm an outlier.

I can process two fine: one "the workspace" the other "the reference/product/outcome/tests".

I tried really hard to teach myself structure, but with three monitors, I find myself always loosing windows, losing the cursor etc. Hacks like "find my cursor" (not default on Linux) help, but I'd rather have a clean mental map of where my cursor, focus and windows are, at all times.

What stuck best was having the third monitor hold the API/documentation/reference but still, the mental power to keep all my whereabouts mapped in my head were just too much.

Also note that I went from one to three monitors, so this is not "just too used to two monitors to ever change" it was the other way around.

Ubuntu has nice tiling features without requiring tiling for everything ([meta]-[→] and [meta]-[←]) that allow my now-ingrained use of two monitors on my laptop-screen when I'm somewhere without a second monitor. Another thing that I disliked about my three-monitor-setup: it does not map in any way to a single monitor: using virtual desktops worked, somewhat but still too different.

I do basically all my work on my laptop without an external display. I use two displays for some specific tasks where I need to look at two things at once.

I like one large 4k monitor right in front of me, and the window manager is set to allow splitting windows in thirds. Laptop off to the side with music, terminal, and other auxiliary stuff.

Blogs never left— they may have withered to near-nothingness after the same exact people who claim to want them abandoned them, but they’re still here.

I may be wrong but I believe the people who claim to want blogs abandoned them for sites like Hacker News.

At least count your blessings that making blogging platforms must not impress promotion committees nearly as much as writing new chat apps.

At one point Blogger in the early oughts was ahead of the pack in leading mainstream acceptance and usage of blogs. At one point my feed list was over half Blogger sites, but today I can think of only a few Blogger-hosted blogs left at all in my feed list, none of them have been updated recently, and those that have updated recently were claimed by spammers and (sadly) dropped from my list.

I can't imagine there's much more than a skeleton crew at Blogger keeping the lights on, and I would be unsurprised, if in pushing the metaphor to the LiveJournal thing, to learn that they were being kept in the Bay Area equivalent of Siberia by some half-mad state actors that need Blogger's zombie to keep its current undead behavior in some strange psy ops nightmare.

1 for my full screen IDE: 3 files side by side, multiple terminals

1 with 2 browser windows: my product (a web app), and another with specs, stack overflow, google

And my macbook’s screen with slack or email.

Whenever I have 2 monitors or less, I find myself switching windows around all the time! With 3 I just move my eyes and mouse.

I was one of the people who worked on 15” retina MBP everywhere, even in the office where I had 30” on my desk, to not have to readjust and keep optimal habits for the screen size. Now I simply refuse to work on a laptop at all, it feels like being trapped into a tiny box and I get literally claustrophobic :)

I have used between 1-3 monitors over the last decade, and there sure are advantages to having 3 for certain tasks. However, I noticed that having multiple monitors resulted in me having a dedicated screen for email (usually the smallest, my laptop screen). This decreased my productivity.

Perhaps not everyone has this weak spot, but for me using multiple monitors has a downside from an attention/focus perspective.

I miss it.

What's this?

I chip away at it now every other night. It's namely a simple multiplayer client. Britons is the only civ.

“No big deal”, I thought. I’ll just go to Sta... Dammit COVID!

But with a 3rd monitor, you’re well into diminishing returns, it may even end up being a distraction if it becomes a Slack/Mail/web screen.

I'm currently using two external monitors, with my laptop docked and closed. I find the "dedicated screen for <distraction>" was a problem for me when I had my laptop screen open, because it's a different size/resolution/position than my actual monitors. On the other hand, I never have that problem with my dedicated monitors - in my mind they're a part of the same "workspace" because they're the same size, resolution, and positioned together - so I could see myself going to 3 desktop monitors one day.

I'm just pushing back against these out of touch fads. Most developers worldwide don't have a three-monitor setup. There is no proven correlation between quality software and 4K displays or mechanical keyboards (to name other fads). More importantly, the best devs I've known -- people I admire -- used tiny laptops with tiny displays, and shrugged when offered even a single external monitor; it just wasn't a big deal for them.

But the only thing that will is writing lots of code -- over years and decades. And about 12 years ago, I started running into this anti-feature of human physiology known as "aging". And whereas in my think-I'm-so-l33t 20s I could bang out code on crappy desktop and laptop keyboards, by my 30s they were turning my hands into gnarled claws.

The remedy for this, for me, was a keyboard with Cherry MX switches. The crisp feedback let me know when a stroke was registered, so I unconsciously pressed each key less hard and was able to type faster with less pain.

I think in general the thought is, if you care enough about your craft that you seek out refined tools, that care will be reflected in higher-quality development. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but I'm inclined to believe there's a correlation.

I mean, it would be weird to visit a professional carpenter's house and see Harbor Freight tools, right?

Other bizarre opinions I've read from Atwood and his followers: that you should be an excellent typist (this is also related to owning a mechanical keyboard). No. Just no. Typing speed is not the bottleneck when writing software. The bottleneck is my brain. I've never seen a project fail because people typed too slowly.

I have let my WPM drop a fair bit over time. I'm still relatively young yet, but I see no reason to go fast when I realize that most of the typing amounts to disposable bullshit. It's better to spend time thinking and developing thought patterns, and then just type a little bit to jog your mind and clarify. I allow myself to write some cheap code, but the point of that is to sketch, and the sketch should be light and quick, for the same reason that artists will say to favor long, confident strokes instead of chicken-scratch markings.

This scares the shit out of me. I'm not in the older subset of programmers (<30 atm), and this has gotten to the point where the latency actually affects my workflow.

I agree except with a caveat: the mechanical action of typing, formatting, refactoring, fixing typos and missing semicolons, and moving code around actually distracts the brain from the higher level task at hand. And when the brain is already the bottleneck, I don't want to make it worse by wasting brain cycles on mechanical drudgery.

As one might expect, I feel far more productive when I'm using languages and tools that require me to type less and refactor & re-edit code less. I think the language would matter less if I could just wish code onto the screen. Until then, learning to touch type (with as few errors as possible! not necessarily as fast as possible) and use editor features to make it more effortless is the next best thing.

With three monitors, I know exactly where my windows are. If I have more than three windows that’s annoying, but I keep the extra ones on the middle monitor to simplify things.

I agree, if speed of your typing is your bottleneck in getting code written, perhaps you should be coding smarter not harder.

I think there is some wisdom that you should try to be a "good" typist, in that better typing skills reduce the risk of injury (RSI), but that's self-care/ergonomics, and while still very important, there are plenty of good software developers that hunt-and-pecked their way to an early retirement (and/or multiple carpal tunnel surgeries).

I see typing like the ability to do mental arithmetic: being able to do it well isn't the thing that's directly valuable, but it removes distraction from the activity that is valuable, and that ends up making it valuable as well.

Another way to look at it: the faster you think, the faster you need to type in order for it not to become the bottleneck (during the times where you're actually implementing an algorithm as opposed to designing it). Of course, that's not just a function of raw typing skill, but also of the tools you use and the verbosity of your programming language. (An amusing corollary of this is that for society at large, it's useful to have great hackers who are bad typists: they will be tempted to develop better tools from which the good typists can also benefit!)

I've never known a great developer who did hunt-and-peck typing though. I do know great developers who have their own typing system. They simply never bothered to learn the "proper" way to do ten finger typing, and that's fine (unless those typing systems are worse for RSI, which was the case for me personally).

Note Atwood claims you must be an excellent typist, training yourself to become one. I find this fetishization of a mechanical skill bizarre. I'm not advocating clumsily struggling with the keyboard like an elderly person, but past the point of "I'm a decent typist", I find that's enough.

I find there's no correlation between the problem-solving ability needed to be a great software developer and being a fast typist of the sort Atwood et al advocate.

I file this under "weird things some programmers believe without evidence" ;)

Multiple monitors though is purely personal preference I think. While having the documentation on another screen is something I personally find useful, if anything it probably makes me lazier about trying to remember things.

I think it's valuable to be able to type effortlessly without having to think about it too hard. Typing is a distraction that takes brain power away from the important things.

I think in many cases, people hide the fact that they're not competent with high-cost professional tools, because laymen use it as a proxy for talent that they cannot evaluate.

I think that's also why many exceptional programmers just use a 5-year old laptop -- they don't need to compensate.

A day-trader having 12 monitors mounted on the wall doesn't make him profitable.

That's said my extra 20 inch monitor helps me to visualize.

The correlation seems more likely to me that if you can afford the fancy tools then you've already had some level of success. Though there are those new mechanics who bury themselves in a mountain of debt buying a whole chest full of Snap-On stuff...

Plus, a tradesman will also sometimes lose tools, drop them in places they can't recover them from and so on.

On the other hand, the day I want to fix some issue at home, the last thing I want is the tool I use perhaps once a year to be an additional source of issue, because it involves a round trip to the store.

The issue with heavy use is not that they don't work but that they're heavier, less ergonomic, and less robust/repairable than the name brands; if you can afford the name brands and will be using the tool until it breaks, fixing it, and then using it more then you'll want to go with the name brands.

I am not a good developer, it is not my job, but I started coding on a Commodore 64 in text mode, then I did Cobol and FoxPro for DOS on 80x25 screen with no problem. But when larger monitors appeared, I used it, when the possibility to use more than one monitor appeared, I used it. It is a case of technology helping you, not making you better but helping - I am more productive using 2 monitors than limiting to just one. Because of this, I use the laptop (1366x768 screen) only as a portable email tool, everything else is on a pair of 24" monitors, in the office or at home. Sometimes I pull a monitor from another desk (in the office) or other computer (at home) when I do specific work that benefits of 3 monitors, but it is not a matter of preference, just specific use cases where 3 is better than 2.

I bang away at my mba 13" 2013 these days and the only real gripe i have is the lack of delete & backspace keys combo: I've never gotten comfortable without it.

That said, the only reason i could possibly use more screen real estate is web debugging. But to me that's more of an indictment of the environment I'm "coding" in.

The only time ever needed two monitors was back writing 3d games on a 3dfx (before nvidia head hunted their engineers) and needed to debug something while running full screen.

While i understand this argumentation, to me, monitors, their size & their number have always been pretty much...meh. instead it's the quality of the monitor itself (refresh rates, contrast, brightness)

Wow, that's hardcore! I don't think I could do it though. Thank for sharing your experience!

Which 3dfx games you collaborated with, if you don't mind sharing? (I never owned one, I was a TNT fanboy myself).

I’m not sure I follow. Are you complaining about the lack of a dedicated Delete key on Macs, having to use only one key for both Backspace (Delete key) and Delete (Fn + Delete keys)?

But I will tell you why multi monitor setups aren't the best for me. It doesn't feel like having a nice big desk to work at; rather, it's like having a separate desk for each monitor, and I have to move from one to the other to use it. With more than one centered monitor, I have to move my head to look between them, or my entire body, so that I can face straight towards whichever monitor I'm currently looking at. I've tried going back to multi monitor setups many times and every time I get tired of it faster due to straining my neck, eyes, elbows and shoulders with all that turning-to.

For me, it's one very nice monitor, with my laptop plugged in in clamshell mode (although now I leave my rMBP cracked so I can use TouchID).

I've also been using a window manager (Moom) with hotkeys to be able to set up three vertical windows on my screen. That seems to be the sweet spot for me: I can have multiple different code editors, or editor+terminal+web, or throw in email/slack/whatever into the mix. (I can also split a vertical column to two windows to achieve a 2 row x 3 column layout, and lots of other layouts, 1x1 vert/hor, 2x2, centered small/large...) I feel like I've arrived where you're at, my perfect setup!

I also still enjoy the 13" rMBP screen, although I can't get to 3 columns, and lately the keyboard hurts my wrists after extended usage. I use a Kinesis Freestyle 2 with the monitor+rMBP which has been absolutely fantastic for typing ergonomics.

I don't want that. There was a time when I used multiple monitors, but I've found that just working on a laptop works better for me. It's less distracting, and I find switching between windows to be both faster and less disorienting than turning my head to look at another monitor.

I can definitely understand other people preferring multiple monitors, but not everyone has the same preferences.

I LOVE the trackpad & keyboard combo on my MacBookPro. For a while, I was using Teleport to use my laptop as the input device for my iMac.

I do occasionally use the Magic Mouse for drawing (direct manipulation) tasks.

(My first laptop was a second-hand HP 6710b at 1680×1050 for 15″, and that set me to never accepting 1366×768. So my next laptop was 15″ 1920×1080, and now I use a 13″ (though I’d rather have had 15″) 3000×2000 Surface Book, and it’s great. Not everyone will be able to justify the expense of 4K or similar (though I do think that anyone that’s getting their living by it should very strongly consider it worthwhile), but I honestly believe that it would be better if laptop makers all agreed to manufacture no more 15″ laptops with 1366×768 displays, and take 1920×1080 as a minimum acceptable quality. As it is, some people understandably want a cheap laptop and although the 1920×1080 panel is not much dearer than the 1366×768 panel, you commonly just can’t buy properly cheap laptops with 1920×1080 panels.)

I'll go one step further: I used the LG 27" 5K Display for two whole years before returning to a 34" Ultrawide with a more typical DPI.

Obviously I preferred the pixel density and image quality of the high-DPI screen, but I find myself more productive on the 34" Ultrawide with a regular DPI. (FWIW, LG now has a newer pseudo-5K Ultrawide that strikes a balance between the two).

I look forward to the day that monitors of all sizes are available with high DPI, but I don't consider it a must-have upgrade just yet.

Also Note that Apple made font rendering worse starting in OS X 10.14 by disabling subpixel AA. Using a regular DPI monitor on Windows or Linux is a better experience than using the same monitor on OS X right now. If you're only comparing monitors based on OSX, you're not getting the full story.

My work monitor is a really nice 27" 4k LG monitor, which a coworker picked out. He's a real monitor specs nerd and made a lot of assertions like the OP. The scaling issues are endless and really bother me, and I don't notice the higher PPI at all. I much prefer the ultrawide Dell - it gives me a feeling that I don't even need to maximize my windows and I can still have lots of space.

On the other hand, when you're done work its amazing for flight simulator or other games that support the aspect ratio properly.

I don't mind the pixels, as long as the font rendering system is good.

Of course I understand the need for a Retina display if you're working on macOS...

So yeah, if your primary device is a modern Mac, you really want a high-res, high-density screen.

Desktop Linux had the same problem for a while.

Font rendering on macOS is more "authentic" to the original shape at the expense of clarity from hinting/pixel-snapping.

At this point I clearly prefer lower latency and higher framerate over more pixels.

And sure, resolution isn’t free, but at these levels that was an argument for the hardware of eight years ago, not the hardware of today. All modern hardware can cope with at least one 4K display with perfect equanimity. Excluding games (which you can continue to run at the lower resolutions if necessary), almost no software will be measurably affected in latency or frame rate by being bumped from 1080p to 4K. Graphics memory requirements will be increased to as much as 4×, but that’s typically not a problem.

Also, I don't like using non-integer resolution scaling, the results are always a bit blurry/unpleasant, even on high-dpi monitors.

The only good solution today is the iMac 5K. Yes, 5K makes all the difference — it lets me comfortably fit three columns of code instead of two in my full-screen Emacs, and that's a huge improvement.

4K monitors are usable, but annoying, the scaling is just never right and fonts are blurry.

Built-in retina screens on macbooks are great, but they are small. And also, only two columns of code, not three.

One thing I noticed is that as I a) become older, b) work on progressively more complex software, I do need to hold more information on my screen(s). Those three columns of code? I often wish for four: ClojureScript code on the frontend, API event processing, domain code, database code. Being older does matter, too, because short-term memory becomes worse and it's better to have things on screen at the same time rather than switch contexts. I'm having hopes for 6K and 8K monitors, once they cost less than an arm and a leg.

So no, I don't think you can develop using "tiny laptops with poor 1366x768 displays". At least not all kinds of software, and not everyone can.

This opinion seems bizarre to me. You start by offering personal (and valid) anecdote, then end up saying "I don't think you can develop [...]". But this flies in the face of evidence. Most people by far do not use your preferred monitor setup (iMac 5K) and in my country a vast number of developers use 1366x768 to develop all sorts of high quality software.

It's one thing to say "as I grow older, I find I prefer $SETUP". No-one can argue with that, it's your opinion (and it might very well become mine as I grow... um, older than I already am!). It's an entirely different thing to claim, as you do here and I think TFA does in similar terms, "you cannot prefer lower tech setups", "you cannot develop software this way", "it's very difficult to develop software without $SETUP". The latter is demonstrably false! I've seen it done, again and again, by people who were masters at their craft.

I do respect your opinion, but I still hold to mine. I also think this discussion won't lead anywhere, because we are glossing over the terms. Not every "developer" is the same, not every "software" is of the same complexity. I can fix CSS in a single 80x25 terminal, I can't do that when thinking about changes in an ERP system.

Regrettably, following (my) logic does mean you cannot say "you [the generic you] cannot develop like this", because this is indeed easily disproven. People can and do (and sometimes even prefer to). That's the problem with generalizing from your personal opinion ("I don't like this") to the general ("people cannot like this").

When we are talking pixel count, we have to talk about size of the display also. a 28" 4k is acceptable, a 40"+ 4K is best used as a TV.

The best display I use right now is a 11" iPad Pro with a refresh rate at 120 Hz. You really can feel it, especially for stylus work.

One of my roles for a long time was speccing/procuring computer equipment (later overseeing the same) for a huge diverse organization. I took feedback, complaints from users and vendors, etc. People are passionate about this stuff... I was physically threatened once, and had people bake cookies and cakes multiple times as a thank you for different things.

The only monitor complaints I recall getting in quantity were: brightness, I need 2, and i need a tilt/swivel mount. Never heard about resolution, etc. Print and graphic artists would ask for color calibrated displays. Nobody ever asked for 3, and when we started phasing in 1920x1080 displays, we literally had zero upgrade requests from the older panels.

Developers wanted 2 displays and SSDs.

IMO, there are two key criteria for monitors. Real estate and pixel density, and in some cases, you can't get both affordably.

I have had 15" laptops with 4K displays for some time now. I love the pixel density. But I can't do certain types of tasks on them because I end up getting real estate anxiety. I feel so constricted on a laptop screen, even when I add a second monitor.

My desktop has 2 x 27" 4K monitors running without scaling. So I have plenty of real estate, but the text could look nicer. Having said that, I don't miss sharp text in the same way that I miss real estate when using my laptops, at least from a productivity perspective.

I don't think a 5K screen is an answer for me, because my first urge would be to try to use it without scaling for more real estate.

On the other hand, a pair of 27" 8K screens (does such a beast even exist, and is it affordable?) would be ideal, because 1:1 scaling on such a beast is impossible at that monitor size, but 200% scaling would basically give me the same workspace real estate that I have now but with super sharp text.

Well that is a user setting, and I tend to think the first retina iPhone is what started the trend.

Also, at certain screen sizes, 1:1 scaling is just impractical due to limitations of the human eye.

My 27" 4K screen is pretty much at my personal limit in terms of what I can handle at 1:1 scaling for my normal viewing distance. Had I gotten a 24" 4K screen, I'd have to set the text scaling to ~125% which would also translate into some lost screen real estate.

Scaling isn't even relevant. It makes sense to talk about scaling pixel artifacts, but not vectors one. The font is 8pt or 20pt, you can configure that on your own. 1:1 scaling is just some arbitrary and artificial fixed pixel/letter seen.

A 24" 4K screen (basically a 24" imac) had text the same size as a pre-retina 24" imac, they just used more pixels to render that text.

In any case, Windows is just using a scaling feature. But when you scale, you are losing workspace in exchange for sharpness.

When 4 physical pixels translates to 1 logical pixel, you've actually lost 3 pixels of potential real estate on a screen size where your eyes can actually discern those pixels.

On a 15" 4K monitor, losing that real estate is not a big deal, because >90% of people can't easily read or see anything scaled at 1:1 on a screen that size. When you scale that screen at 200%, you're basically using a 1080p screen with sharper text. You don't gain any real estate at all from the higher resolution.

On a 40" 4K screen, it's a whole other story. The text may not be sharp, but you can have way more windows open on that screen, which makes it easier to multitask. It's like having a grid of 2x2 20" 1080p screens.

-addendum - my visual limit is 1080p @ 1:1 on a ~14" screen, which is why I am fine with no scaling on my 4K 27" screens.

Every time I use a 'non-retina' type of display (like an old laptop I use for testing or my 19" 1080p monitor), it feels like I'm looking through some dirty glass because of the blotchy effect.

I tried 4K on one linux environment (and documented the experience[1]), and according to numerous responses, my situation was not unique: if you try 4K on any Linux environment, and don't enjoy everything being tiny, then it's not a fun time trying to get everything to behave like you can with Apple's built in resolution scaling options.

[1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/i-replaced-my-macbook...

And some grow to like them - I used to scoff... before I tried it for myself.

I think as well, it depends on your eyesight, and also your workflows and apps. I use Rider (and previously Visual Studio), and these have a lot of panes/windows - it's really nice to be able to have the code front and centre, with debug output, logs and a command prompt in another screen, for example. Another example would be to have zoom/webex in one screen, while I'm taking markdown notes in another.

A good while back, I moved to a dual monitor setup at home (1x 3k in landscape, 1x 1200p in portrait), and a triple monitor setup at the office (1x 1080p in landscape, 2x 1200p in portrait). I also use a Dell screen manager, so I can easily setup regions that windows can snap to - for example, the portrait displays are usually split in 2 horizontally.

The triple monitor setup is admittedly gratuitous, but I'm never going back from a dual setup - it's just so convenient to have everything I need always there, instead of constantly flipping back and forth through the many windows I invariably have open. It feels like I'm context switching much less.

My work laptop is a Dell Latitude 7480. It's display resolution is a 1366x768. I normally use it with an external monitor, because the screen is not only small but also low quality. This... fine... piece of hardware was bought my current employer I think 2 years ago.

In all workplaces I've seen, either you get a macbook (with their high quality display) or an entry level laptop from Dell/HP/Lenovo (or some no-name brand) with a low quality 1366x768 display, which is what passes for entry level where I live. In many companies, macbooks are usually given to people who can explain why they need them, or to reward good performance. However, newer startups seem to default to macbooks.

Put yourself in the mindset of a typography geek. Then, by default, you will care about almost all of these things. I'm not saying you should care about all of these things all or most of the time, but that's the correct mindset to put you in sync with the author's conclusions (mostly -- I don't really think 120Hz is that big a deal).

The second and third monitor recommended in the article have 4ms latency, so there's essentially no reason to buy them.

There are good 4k 120hz monitors with strobing for way less than the $2000 mentioned. E.g. the zisworks kit for Samsung U28H750 (first available already in 2017): http://www.zisworks.com/shop.html

IMO 120 Hz monitors are overrated for pretty much everything except for FPS games (and similar fast-paced interactive titles).

I have a 144 Hz display and I would not want to go back to a 60 Hz display for gaming. At some point, my monitor changed to a 60 Hz refresh rate without telling me after some driver update. The first time I played Overwatch after that happened I could immediately tell that something was wrong, since the game just didn't feel as responsive and smooth as it usually does.

If you're scanning tons of text, all the time, across multiple windows, you need a lot of real estate, and in times of yore you would turn to printouts and spread them over your desk. A lot of modern dev goes in this direction because you're constantly looking up docs and the syntax is shaped towards "vertical with occasional wide lines and nesting" - an inefficient use of the screen area. Or you have multiple terminals running and want to see a lot of output from each. Or you have a mix of a graphical app, text views and docs. A second monitor absolutely does boost productivity for all these scenarios since it gives you more spatial spread and reduces access to a small headturn or a glance.

If you're writing dense code, with few external dependencies, you can have a single screen up and see pretty much everything you need to see. Embedded dev, short scripts and algorithms are more along these lines. Coding with only TTS(e.g. total blindness) reduces the amount you can scan to the rate of speech, and I believe that consideration should be favored in the interest of an inclusive coding environment. But I'm digressing a bit.

For a more objective ranking of concerns: pixel density ranks lower than refresh rates, brightness and color reproduction in my book. If the screen is lowish res with a decent pixel font that presents cleanly at a scale comfortable to the eye, and there's no "jank" in the interaction, it's lower stress overall than having smooth characters rendered in a choppy way with TN panel inverted colors, CRT flicker, or inappropriate scaling.

Book quality typography is mostly interesting for generating a complete aesthetic, while when doing computing tasks you are mostly concerned about the symbolic clarity, which for English text is reasonably achieved at the 9x14 monospace of CP437, and comfortably so if you double that. There's a reason why developers have voted en-masse to avoid proportional fonts, and it's not because we are nostalgic for typewriters.

And yet for some reason we have ended up with tools that blithely ignore the use-case and apply a generic text rendering method that supports all kinds of styling, which of course makes it slow.

This is sad in itself. Proportional fonts are vastly superior to type writer fonts in presenting code. The kerning even makes for better readability even if it comes at the expense of the ability to do ASCII art.

My monitor is still available at Walmart for $500. It's like an actual desktop when you can spread out all your stuff.

The main issue with TVs is that HDMI sucks compared to DP. You'll need a half-decent GPU from 2015 or later for good HDMI 2.x support.

But you can't spread out your stuff any more than you'd do on a 24" 4k monitor...

I've realized that a stable environment does wonders for productivity. What you got used to (stable) is path-dependent and personality-specific. But it doesn't matter. What matters is to train yourself to sit down and work. If you're opening that laptop lid and thinking about visiting Hacker News first, shut it down, get up, walk away from the desk and then retry. At this point, I feel like doing a "productivity, productivity" chant / rant a la Steve Ballmer's "developers, developers" chant:

original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRm0NDo1CiY

In addition to what thomaslord said [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23554382 ], 4K monitors tend to be widescreen. 1280x1024 user here; you'll take my aspect ratio when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

I wish there would be more 1920x1200 or 2560x1600 displays...

Lacking those options at reasonable prices leaves me with the option of using rotated 2K monitors, though 27" ones are uncomfortably tall and 24-25" ones are a little too high in pixel density.

Huawei's Matebook's 3K (3000x2000) display with its 3:2 (1.5) ratio at almost 14" size is an amazing sweet spot though. I wish they would have it in 28" size for desktop use :)

In the end I'm working on 27" 2K and 5K iMacs for about a decade now and I see it as a good compromise, despite the aspect ratio, but I quite like my 30" HP ZR30w with its 2560x1200 resolution. Unfortunately its backlight is getting old and uneven :(

Definitely overpriced for a developer machine, but there is also the Surface Studio 2, with its 4500 x 3000, 28 inch, 192 DPI display, 192 being exactly 2x the "standard" 96 DPI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Studio_2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface

I found an interesting middle ground though. The old AmigaOS Topaz font as TTF :D http://www.geekometry.com/2013/11/amiga-topaz-truetype-font-...

Joking aside, the narrower variants of the Input font looks pretty good with anti-aliasing: https://input.fontbureau.com/preview/

Edit: actually, wouldn't 1440x1280 (aspect ratio 1.125, which is even less than my usual 1.25) be a better use of such a LCD panel, rather than a obviously-useless 1280x1440 (with a aspect ratio less than one)?

The bigger issue is that, like we've been doing for the last 40 years, a cutting edge 2X display should eventually become the new 1X display, while the former 1X's become obsolete. This makes building software a bit easier, even with resolution independence, it is difficult supporting more than 2 generations of display technologies (e.g. right now we have 100 PPI, 150 PPI, 220 PPI, even 300+ PPI at the bleeding edge).

More importantly, it's one thing to say "I prefer this new tech/resolution/gadget" and another to claim "how can you work like this?" (Where "this" can be "without a mac", "without a mechanical keyboard", "without a 4K monitor", "without three 4K monitors", etc).

Software is developed successfully without any of those. It's not only not an impediment, it's not like a sort of martyrdom either. So no, it's not time to upgrade that monitor.

Someone else in this thread commented that for many devs, their gadgets are a proxy for actual skill. It's easier to show you have a 5K monitor "like all hackers should" than to actually be a good developer.

It should also be cheap enough now, and at some point fabbing a 200+ PPI display will cost the same as an older one, it won't make much sense to keep making the lower res displays anymore (like it doesn't make sense to fab 32MB DIMMs anymore).

I just disagree that it's "time to upgrade your monitor", or that the current tech is bad or makes it hard to be productive.

I don't understand the value of multiple displays for code work. Just about everything that I could do with multiple displays can be more ergonomically achieved with multiple logical desktops. I can swap a desktop with a keystroke rather than pivoting, and that workflow translates well from laptops to large workstations.

When I code I notice a few things about the multimonitor setup. My cursor can travel 10 physical feet of screen space and it's literally inefficient to point. The ergonomics are terrible. The entire setup basically feeds inattention and an ever-sprawling amount of crap being opened. More than that I think having multiple large rectangles shooting light into your eyeballs kind of screws with your circadian rhythms.

When I code I use a laptop and enjoy how briefly my hands leave the keyboard before returning because what little pointing i'm doing can be done extremely quickly because of the small size of my workflow. Bigger is better is oversold - a workspace should match the work - too small is just more common than too big.

I'm sorry to say this but that is not a real argument.

It taught me the valuable lesson that creating software, to them, was mostly about thinking, not about the gadgets you use to write it down.

Like another commenter said, it seems gadgets work as proxies for talent for some developers -- "you should use a mechanical keyboard and a 5K three-monitor setup, like real hackers do" -- because actual talent is harder to gain and demonstrate. A sort of cargo culting by accumulating tech gadgets.

You are right that there is a cargo culting going on, but it is going on both sides. There are a lot of strawmen out there as well.

Phones and watches are a different use case, so I'm not sure what you mean. I don't type code in either.

> I’m not sure what you are arguing against

Indeed.

1. Main screen. For the code editor, intense web browsing, etc.

2. Secondary screen. For debugging visuals (since I work on web stuff, it usually hosts a Chromium window; for a mobile dev, I imagine it would be an emulator/simulator), documentation referencing (with the code editor open on the main screen), etc.

3. Third screen. For all comms-related things: MS Teams/Outlook/Discord/etc.

I didn't mention terminal, because I prefer a quake-style sliding terminal. For a lot of devs, I imagine that having a terminal on their secondary screen permanently would work great as well.

P.S. Not that long ago, I realized that the physical positioning of monitors matters a lot (to me, at least) as well. I used to have 2 of them in landscape orientation side-by-side and one in portrait orientation to the side. It was fine, but didn't feel cohesive, and I definitely felt some unease. Finally got a tall mounting pole, and now I have the landscape oriented monitors one on top of each other instead of side-by-side (with the rest of the setup being the same). That was a noticeable improvement to me, as it felt like things finally clicked perfectly in my head.

I just dislike being told unless I follow these fads I'm a subpar developer. I don't own a mechanical keyboard or a three monitor setup. I don't own a 4K monitor (I suppose I eventually will, when they become the norm). When Apple came up with retina displays, I didn't feel I had magically become unable to write code because my display at the time was 1440x900.

It's weird to me to specify the number of monitors given how they come in a vast range of shapes and sizes.

For example, my dream setup used to be a single 55" curved 8K monitor. That's the rough equivalent of a 2x2 grid of 27" 4K monitors (I currently have two 27" 4K side by side in landscape @ 1:1 scaling).

The only problem with my so-called dream set up though is I don't think my computer glasses, which are sharp only for surfaces between a range of 21" to 27" would allow me to see everything sharp from corner to corner on that monitor, which sucks.

Also then when one of my disastrous kids destroys it I don't feel bad.

on edit: fixed typo

I found it to be less distracting and the two screens are more physically manageable, and easier to replicate if i change setting (cheaper too!). The only thing I will change is whether I'm in landscape/landscape or landscape/portrait. I can never make up my mind about what I prefer.

Email hides behind the web browser and slack behind the output.

I'm primarily a C programmer. 1366x768 limits my functions to about 35 lines at 100 columns wide. My font is Terminus, sized at 14.

I thank my x230 for enforcing me into a paradigm where functions are short and to the point. I watch my co-workers flip their monitors vertically and write code that goes on for days. While it's not my style, I'm thankful I've been forced to make do of limited space, and it has trained me well.

So yeah, nobody needs a 4K display. But I would think most people don't know what they're missing. (:

Linux can be made to look good in that respect, but the situation for scaling legacy applications is pretty bad.

Multiple monitors are slightly different: the physical gap means it’s not a seamless switch and not every task benefits.

Probably why ultrawides are gaining popularity.

Really I want a single plus-shaped monitor that can act in several display modes:

- mimic 3 monitors. Left and right are 4:3 (ideal for single application), center is 9:12 and larger. Shape: -|-

- Single vertical monitor. Same as above but with left and right "virtual monitors" turned off for reduced eye strain. Shape: |

- Single ultrawide horizontal monitor (connect the left and right parts with the strip in the middle, turn off unused pixels at the top and bottom). Shape: ---

[1]: https://www.dell.com/si/business/p/dell-u3818dw-monitor/pd

i.e. I have a three monitor setup, two 1080 screens and a central 1440p screen. Mechanical cherry blue keyboard and a nice gaming mouse. Big desk. One of those anti-RSI boob mousemats. Nice headphones. Beefy computer. Ergonomic office chair. Everything at the right height. Quiet room. Next to an open window, but which is in shade.

Some days I will happily chug away writing reams of code.

Other days I will get nothing done and every minor annoyance will bring me out of focus; background sounds, glitches in my desktop environment, almost inconceivable hitches in computer performance, my chair feels wrong, the contrast of all text is too high, it's too dark in here, it's too bright, this is all bullshit, I'm so done with computers...

And on other days I'll get even more done, hunched like a Goblin in my living room armchair with my legs tucked beneath me, working through to the early morning, on my tiny 13 inch dell laptop, vaguely aware that I have searing pain* through one wrist, having not eaten for 12 hours, but completely and utterly content and in flow writing code or a paper.

Humans are crazy fickle.

There's no Platonic Ideals when it comes to Crushing It(tm) as a software developer.

I think learning the art of mindfulness and meditation does more to help you focus than expensive equipment fads and micro-optimizing your environment.

* Before anyone mentions, yeah I'm aware RSI is Not Good. I've got a bunch of various remedies for it. Ironically I've found that bouldering helps with this it the most. Just not able to do that during lockdown :(

By 'like them' are you talking about the full set of tradeoffs, or the raw visuals? Because I'd be very surprised if someone actually disliked how an all-else-equal 4K screen looks, compared to 1080.

So I am still stuck with my regular HD monitor + laptop monitor - which is pretty good.

In the last 3 months I went from 1 screen to 2 to 3 as I progressed through particular stages of development. When we 'go live' I'll easily be using all 3, but I don't _really_ need them, it's a nice to have.

It turns out the whole idea of needing tons of desktop space was vastly exaggerated. You can't focus on 3 screens at once, it is impossible. Even on a large screen you can only look at one place at a time. Programmers are focused on one thing for a long period of time anyways - your code editor. Maybe a terminal as well that you need to swap to occasionally. Having multiple monitors has limited benefits.

Where multiple monitors is helpful is if you're an operator - you are watching many dashboards at once to observe if things break or change. Traders for example will have workstations with 9 screens at once. But this makes sense - they are not focusing on one thing at a time, they need to quickly look at multiple things for anything unusual.

I've personally found that using a tiling WM gives me vastly more benefits than multiple monitors ever would. Although I was also pretty happy using Gnome's super-tab/super functionality during my non-tiling days.

4K is sort of a nice to have, but hardly a requirement. I'm as happy on a normal DPI screen as I am on a retina screen. Our brains adapt very quickly and unless the text is overly blurry (because of poor hinting implementations), a regular DPI screen is perfectly fine for coding on. My own personal preference is high refresh rates over anything else - I can't stand latency.

A 5K monitor allows you to view an enormous set of workspaces and code, and sharply. It will cost you less than $300 a year, which for any decent developer is less than 1/2 of 1% of your annual revenues (and its tax deductible for contractors!).

There is no way the increase on productivity doesn’t far outweigh that cost.

I was plenty productive on PC XT clone with a tiny monochrome CRT monitor and an Hercules video card. (I wanted to say I was plenty productive with my C64, but that'd be stretching it :P )

What I want to fight is this notion that once tech N+1 arrives, then tech N must have been unproductive. That's demonstrably false, a form of magical thinking, and not a healthy mindset in my opinion.

Are we talking about developing modern code on an Apple 2 now? If so I misunderstood the parent post, because they were using the past tense.

In any case, consider this: how do you feel about your current suboptimal, unproductive hardware & software of choice right now? Your current programming language and monitor resolution cannot be used to code. It's simply not possible to be productive with them.

Think I'm exaggerating? Ok. Fast forward a few years and let's talk about this again. Maybe you'll understand my frustration...

Then we agree! I was pushing back against the notion that one cannot be productive unless using a { 5K monitor; three-monitor setup; mechanical keyboard; $YOUR_FAVORITE_TECH_GADGET HERE }. In other words: it's not "time to upgrade your monitor" ;)

It’s indisputable that modern screens, tools, etc make developers more productive than smaller screens, slower CPUs did.

I used to have 30 minute compile times. Was I “productive “? Sure, I guess, but 20 second compile times make me more productive.

And being able to see over one hundred lines of code side by side with documentation makes me even more productive.

It's one thing to say "I'm more productive with $GADGET". It's another, different thing to say "we weren't productive before $GADGET". I assure some of the old hackers, back in the days when they coded on a PDP-11 (or an Apple II, or whatever) where more productive than me and -- without knowing you -- I'm willing to bet they could be more productive than you. In my opinion the mindset that old tech wasn't "good enough", that leads people to claim "we weren't productive before" in absolute terms, is really pernicious and unhealthy.

Mind you, I'm not saying all gadgets are equal. Faster CPUs to me are obviously more useful than a larger screen. Both are nice, but one is more important than the other.

However, the most important peripheral, the one that makes the most impact on productivity: my brain. And I can't show it off as easily as a brand new macbook or whatever.

Don't forget the cost of buying a new computer that can drive that display.

None of our laptops even have DisplayPort outputs let alone sufficient onboard graphics for that resolution.

I used to run a dev group of 40 people. Every developer got fastest possible pc with big screen monitor back when both were expensive, and their own office with a door. Added about 1% to the cost of each developer, but the benefit to productivity was at least 10-20 times that.

And Not even counting benefits of reduced turnover.

I'm still upset at Lenovo thinking 16 GB should come in one RAM stick.

If you have a Thunderbolt USB-C port then you have a DisplayPort. Some monitors accept it directly and will act as a charger and docking station. Others need a fairly inexpensive USB-C to DP adapter.

Since I used ebook readers with their displays, reading on a monitor is always a compromise in comparison.

Wouldn't want to go lower than 1080 though. It can work of course, but it just doesn't have to be.

I tried it for a while but I find virtual desktops cover my multi-tasking needs just fine.

When I had multiple displays the context switching involved in moving my head and focusing on the other displays wasn't great.

I guess if I was a designer it would make more sense but for coding what I have now works fine.

For me 27" is the perfect display size: - Any bigger and I find I have to move my head to much to be comfortable in the long term and I get a stiff neck. - Any smaller and I can't fit enough on the screen at once and my productive decreases.

2.5k (1440x2560) on a 27" monitor has pixels at a good size that most apps scale by default beautifully on.

5k is exactly double the density of the already perfect 2.5k, so (at least of MacOS) everything displays exactly as it does with 2.5k except really crisp!

Therefore, I now run the 27" LG 5k as my primary screen, and my old 27" 2.5k vertically on the side for all those status like things that it's good to see but don't require my focus. Also, since the size and "looks like" resolution is the same, I can drag windows between them without any changes and size/scale. It just works!

But that's nothing to do with physical size and everything to do with resolution.

The author, Nikita, did exactly mention that point, mid page of the article under the heading of "Get a monitor".

   Let me express an opinion. This is my blog, after all. 

How is more pixels and more legible text not strictly better than lower resolution monitors?

It’s like preferring 10 DPI mice to the modern 1000+ DPI ones, saying that PCIe 4x was better than 8x or actively disliking a modern DSL connection compared to a 56k dialup.

Yours is just an idiotic stance to feel superior than everybody else.

Not everything is a numbers game.

1. Top-tier Macbook Pro 2. Portable Macbook (Air)

I used to have #1 with two large-ish monitors and I hated it. Two monitors are effectively a single 2xW monitor and that means moving your head from side to side constantly. Having them X inches above your keyboard means moving your head up and down (I touch type but need to look at the keyboard occasionally).

A laptop means a hi-res screen and a keyboard in close proximity. Instead of moving your head around you can use Spaces.

The second laptop can act as a second screen if you need it — as well as a coffee shop runner and a backup if your main machine is down or getting serviced.

It’s the same cost or less than a powerful laptop and two external monitors, assuming you are buying hi-res.

I’ll never go back to a 2-3 monitor setup.

I started developing neck pain, so I had to go back to one.

At least buying a 4k/120hz monitor is not painful to your body, only your wallet.

Personally I don’t mind a small UI so I currently just run (macOS) on 3840 × 2160 on two 24” LGs. With size 11 Fira this gives me 8 80char columns.

Everytime I read something like this I cringe. Ergonomics is terrible with laptops. There are no osha approved laptops.

Those developers should sit in a good chair, with a properly positioned keyboard monitor and body, and head off the problems their body will encounter. (or is encountered but ignored)

I look at my screen most of the time. I'm not buying cheap screens anymore. It is just not worth it.

I just refuse to be told that I must use a { three-monitor setup, mechanical keyboard, 4K monitor, macbook, $LATEST_FAD } or otherwise I'm using a subpar development environment.

I still remember when Full HD monitors were all the rage. Nobody considered them cheap tools back then, and somehow code got written and developers were happy. There will come a time when someone on the internet will tell you that a 4K monitor is a cheap tool and that nobody can properly code using one.

My ideal setup is two 1440p monitors, but even then I tend to zoom in quite a bit.

I also had a coworker who was fine with their laptop screen. People you are finicky with these kinds of things seem to have their focus elsewhere over the actual work done.

No, not universally. If I follow the advice and disable font smoothing, it looks worse than any font display I've ever used, including 8 bit home computers. https://i.imgur.com/Y0xkhTb.png

[1] it's hilarious that 1366x768 is called "HD", because marketing. It wasn't high definition even on the day it was introduced.

As for the 1366x768, for some reason for many, many years the wide majority of monitors stopped there, with "Full HD" coming to the masses (but not all) only a few years ago.

"1366x768" meant "half baked HD" from the day it was introduced, so it's understanding that few quality monitors (and especially laptop screens) were made with that resolution.

Do you mean '≡' (U+2261 identical to)? Because no, it very much doesn't; in fact I'm not sure I've ever seen a font where it looked bad short of vertical misalignment with surrounding text.

If OSX is actually doing stupid shit like that, it's no wonder sane-resolution moniters look like crap. Stupid-absurdres monitors will look just as bad, because the problem is the operating system driving them, not the monitor.

0: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/hinting_failures.png

Being able to see more things >>>>>>> sharper text, once you're past 100dpi or so at least.

And first operating systems and unix core utils were most likely written using much simpler tools than what developers have today at their disposal.

I coded on a MacBook Air 11" on daily basis during 1 year. I thought it was no big deal too until I started developing myopia.

Did your eye doctor tell you your myopia developed because of staring at your laptop's screen? (Mine developed when I was a teenager and hadn't yet spent a lifetime of staring at CRT monitors, and my eye doctor told me it was likely unrelated to computer screens. But maybe medicine has changed its opinion, this was decades ago).

But based on the replies, I am wrong and probably retarded ;)

Its more about maximising productivity in my opinion.

Me? I can certainly code with a poor quality 1366x768 display (doing it right now with this Dell Inspiron!) but I hate it. I'm not a 4K snob, but I do like better screens!

So now I need a wider monitor. I was on an NEC 6FG until 2011 and then went to a small dell flat panel 1280x1024. I suppose it is time to join the 2020's.

I have multiple VNC and RemoteDesktops up at any moment, so maybe I'll really splurge and go for one of those fancy curved ones.

This article is written in a style i can really appreciate. That's a lot of research.

I upgraded from a 32" 1080p display to a 32qk500. A significant improvement in visual quality for a reasonable price (~USD$270)