When I was young, I carried a little subnotebook with a 7.1" screen and really enjoyed it. Now I have to hold my phone at a certain exact distance, too close and it's burry, too far and it's blurry. I had to use the 13" work laptop for a few weeks without an external monitor and it was painful, the screen was small enough that I have to lean in to see the text, but then I am too close and so I have to squint. I could crank up the font size, but then the screen doesn't show very much. Having the 27" external monitor means that I can sit at a comfortable distance and crank the magnification up so that everything is legible.
Be careful. One day, this might happen to you too. :D
I don't need it when cleaning my inbox. Or planning a sprint. I don't need it when conferencing. Or when designing an architecture. I don't need it when reviewing PRs, stepping through a debugger, poring through logs, deploying, running ansible or finding what config made that deploy fail.
I split my time as such. I can work on my laptop for a morning, then go home and plug into my large screen just fine. It actually helps me focus: multi-monitor = coding. Laptop only = other work.
Interesting how people work different. Would not like to dig through logs without 2 monitors (allows to have 4 different logs open). Same with debugging (having multiple source positions visible). Or deploying (watching logs/deployment progress). Reviewing PR (having spec side-by-side with code).
It could not imagine any task I could do in a park (besides playing with a dog ;) )...
I'm also an artist, not a programmer, so I don't need to fill my screen with a ton of text. Plus my tools are pretty much designed around regularly zooming in and out.
But admittedly I also don't work long stints at once. If I had to work a few hours in a row my neck would protest and my eyes would concede defeat.
Like anything, it's a spectrum. To some people, "travel" means "I drove to the next state over for the afternoon," and to some it means "I am going to this island down by Antarctica that requires getting a special government permit".
Currently my current and ideal situation is working from home 3-4 days a week and then coming in at the end of the week. Those in office days might be less productive but they do provide enough social interaction for the week.
Finding a nice desk with good WiFi, power socket, and a view was always challenging. Outside isn't ideal because of lacking WiFi/power socket. Free WiFi in backpacker hostels is sometimes limited to a few hundred MB. The Apple Store has a fast connection, but blocks everything that's not port 80 (which means no connecting to our SQL database on Amazon RDS). University WiFi worked well, thanks to a friend's eduroam.
Libraries are wonderful, but need to have longer opening hours in Western countries. The KHOP prayer room in Kaohsiung was excellent.
I wish there were a place I could go after work that isn't the office or my room. As it is, I get a lot done while sitting on a bus, but WiFi, power, and a view would make that much more pleasant.
I am the same. I actually do rent a "hot desk" at a co-working space and I use it barely once a month.
I have probably used it more for a private bathroom in the city centre than for the desk.
The original goal was just to get me out of the house and an excuse to get into the city for a wander. But I almost always choose to actually work in the gardens or at a cafe en-route. I keep renting it because it is pretty cheap and is entirely tax deductable for me, and on occasion it has proven invaluable (rain, cold, noisy at home, need to work for more than a few hours in a row and need the commitment device etc).
I think since most people's taste of remote work happened during COVID, so home was the only acceptable remote work place.
I also work at home in my studio but getting away from the distractions of home is, as this article notes, important.
I thought “remote work” already meant this? I’ve been doing it for years, it’s one of the perks of being a freelance artist. Sometimes I’ve toyed with the idea of getting together with some friends and splitting the rent on a shared studio space but really I know I’d only show up a few days a month.