I have been using a single 28" 4K screen for a while and I've never felt like I needed more pixels since. At 100% scaling there's a ton of space. No need to go through the minimize, maximize, switch, switch back usage pattern.

I've never understood why people are willing to put up with garbage gear either. I'm not talking about the computer itself, but the things you touch.

You sit at this machine and use it for 8h+ a day. Why shouldn't you be in contact with things that feel good to you?

Nice screen (or two if that is your preference), decent keyboard, mouse that feels good. I think it is important.

Mechanics don't use dollar store ratchets, do they?

I mean, a 28" is basically two medium-sized screens' worth of space side by side. But yes, quality on things you use every day matters a lot.

I 100% agree. IF you spend 8h+ a day at your workstation or computer use the best equipment you can afford to get.

>I will NOT be productive at a desk if you put me in front of a single monitor, period.

Give me a break. Software development has been going on for decades now on all kinds of hardware (how did all those Software developers survive all these years??).

You can be productive and get your work done on a single monitor, you just prefer dual monitors.

It's something where once you try it you can't go back.

If my company only gave me dirty river water, sure water is good and technically I'll probably survive if it's free of parasites, but once you have high quality filtered water you don't want to go back to drinking from streams.

>If my company only gave me dirty river water, sure water is good and technically I'll probably survive if it's free of parasites

A single monitor is not a health hazard.

For some reason people here are purposely confusing "I can't" with "I prefer not to"

It's not a health hazard, but it is a bottleneck in a very real sense if you want to keep more than one thing open (whether for reading, writing, running commands, or a combination thereof). It's not just a matter of preference.

I use a tiled window manager + emacs buffers, my 15.6" screen almost always has 2 applications open and 4 when I feel the need. Never had a problem running commands or reading documentation all at the same time.

OK, it's great that this works for you. Some people can't readily adjust to tiling window management, and barely anyone will switch to emacs (for reasons that would take a couple of paragraphs to summarise adequately).

Even I use a tiling terminal application, but that still leaves me needing another display for the web browser and work chat, for instance.

> Some people can't readily adjust to tiling window management, and barely anyone will switch to emacs

Then those are preferences, not need. I agree a second monitor should be provided if asked, but in no way is it a requirement. I'm not alone in my preferences either. I learned to code in Turbo C where the line length was _puny_ compared to even this comment box here. I was probably more productive back then.

> how did all those Software developers survive all these years??

With great difficulty, and/or by having printed reference material in a readily reachable position - think program listings, magazines, reference books, paper notes.

To me, the office mouse feels even more crippling than the crappy keyboard. I usually navigate through code by ctrl clicking on a symbol and then using mouse button 5 to jump back to where I was before, but my office mouse does not have side buttons.

On a related note, if you have never had a mouse with buttons on the side, I can greatly recommend trying it. Especially if you navigate through IDEs with your mouse and not the keyboard, i.e. you have one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard and not both hands on the keyboard.