Comment by soulofmischief
9 months ago
On my Macbook Pro M2, having a browser window on one half of the screen, and my IDE on the other, with a file tree viewer pane and another pane for my LLM tools, a terminal pane at the bottom... I've never been more pressed for real estate for my actual code editing pane. Even 80 chars has me scrolling horizontally. Secondary monitors help but not when you frequently work away from your desk.
Coding on a laptop, even a name-drop-tier status shibboleth, is most of your problem. You write code on a 15" screen when you must for physical/location reasons. You shouldn't ever choose to do it or design your workflow around that constraint.
A 42" 4k TV (got it for $2-300 at the start of the pandemic) gives me four 80-90 column text windows on a mid-tier chromebook. You could not pay me enough to do that same work on a laptop, even a $4k MBP.
(But yes, even with lots of real estate 80 columns is still a net win)
I have a 120" 4K monitor at home, and a 40" 2K. However, that entirely misses the point of my comment, which is that I am frequently away from my desk while working. I'm not sure what point you were trying to make.
Invest in the Vision Pro. It will change your life.
2 replies →
Why only use half the screen for your IDE? Your brain has to switch anyways so just make your IDE and browser fullscreen windows and alt-tab when needed.
In iterative web development the instant feedback is crucial and constantly alt-tabbing is tedious and breaks the flow. When necessary, it's simple to temporarily maximize the window.