Yeah, I would rather have software perform the task of switching my focus between windows than my neck.

There are definitely (at least) two schools of thought on this.

Personally, I'm in the preferring-two-monitors camp. If I can't have two, I'll have three, please. And large ones. Particularly when I'm doing web work, the convenience of having an editor with ample space to open many source files at once on a main screen, an auto-reloading browser with accompanying dev tools on one side monitor, and multiple pages of documentation on the other side is a huge win.

I know other people who are also in this camp, and others still who for similar reasons to others commenting here aren't a fan of lots of monitors. They typically have very consistent patterns in how they set up their working environments and often multiple desktops that they switch between frequently.

I suppose the conclusion is not so much "have multiple monitors" but rather "invest a bit of time and if necessary money in customising your work environment to work well for you".

I like multiple monitors when you have two of the same size and vertical resolution next to each other at the same height. Having the mouse cursor jump I find to be distracting. On a laptop I usually stick to the one "monitor".

I used two 24" monitors at work for years, and thought it was fantastic. But at home, I only have one 27" iMac, and it's more than enough... tried two for a while, and it just didn't help.

I think the 27" is in a sweet spot. Big enough to be able to display several things (2 editor columns + docs + console for example) but not too big so that it's not visible all at once.

Now if it would be possible to get a 27" 5k screen like the new imacs, that would be absolutely great. Same "actual resolution" as the older 27" but with much sharper text.

I use a 48" monitor that lets me have 4 to 8 zones pretty easily, usually the bottom two get the most attention but the top comes in handy when monitoring something or keeping up on stonks.

I'm the same. A company I worked for tried to buy me multiple large monitors of my choice, and couldn't understand how I can do front-end comfortably on a 13" MacBook Pro screen.