2nd monitor for coding?

[Hero101]

I'm curious how you guys have a setup for working on your games.

You see I have been making my games with Flash and coding inside of it as well with classes. I work on a laptop. My latest game demo has 660 lines of code. It's becoming a little bit of a pain to click on the separate tab to go to where my coding is and it's even more of a pain to scroll down through all that coding on my laptop.

So I was wondering if it would be a good idea (or wondering if you fellow coders do this as well) to attach an external monitor to my laptop and rotate it vertically and use it for just my coding? That way I can work on the art side of things on my laptop while coding on the other.

What do you guys think? What do you guys do for your workflow?

[MSGhero]

At 1/11/14 12:34 AM, Hero101 wrote: What do you guys think? What do you guys do for your workflow?

Main monitor for coding. Laptop screen for reading pms, copying stuff from word files, rotating assets in gimp, using texturepacker, compressing assets, etc.

It hurts to code without my 2nd monitor after using it so much.

[slugrail]

I use a 1366x768 laptop screen for both writing and debugging. 10k lines of code and still going strong

[Diki]

I've been coding with two monitors for years now, and I would absolutely hate to not have a second. Hell, I even want a third, but don't have several hundred dollars lying around to drop on another monitor. I typically either have code up on both monitors, or code up on one and the results of what I am coding on the other.

Never used or needed one of those fancy monitors that can be spun to vertical orientation. You can fit plenty of lines of code on a 1920x1080 resolution. That really comes down to personal preference, though.

At 1/11/14 12:34 AM, Hero101 wrote: So I was wondering if it would be a good idea (or wondering if you fellow coders do this as well) to attach an external monitor to my laptop and rotate it vertically and use it for just my coding?

So basically the answer to this is "yes". Coding with one monitor is like coding with one hand: it's 100% possible, but it would really suck.

[Sandremss128]

I imagine that it would be nicer to work with 2 monitors. Especially if you're coding client / server stuff and you can separate the two on the both monitors.
One thing worth mentioning is that linux supports workspaces, which allows you to separate the coding environment and the result, and maybe a workspace for internet browser research and one for chatting. I find that workspaces in linux reduce the need for me to purchase an additional monitor.

[TheNavigat]

I recall a photo of my second monitor. That was my setup at Startup Weekend Alexandria (Egypt). Having it vertical was quite helpful. You may want to try that out.

[Sam]

I've had two monitors, both landscape and also tried the one landscape and one portrait. I'd definitely recommend the latter setup for programming. If you use it a lot more for media consumption or as a general purpose monitor, it takes a bit of getting used to.

Right now I've got one monitor out of choice, I feel I get more done because I'm more focused on the task.

[MSGhero]

At 1/11/14 10:49 AM, TheNavigat wrote: I recall a photo of my second monitor. That was my setup at Startup Weekend Alexandria (Egypt). Having it vertical was quite helpful. You may want to try that out.

My monitor doesn't go that way, so I use fd's split screen and split view (ctrl shift enter).

[HappyWhaleStudios]

I do what you described when I do art heavy things in Flash. I put art on my laptop and code on my external, but if I'm doing something where it's all code, I'll put code on both. It's really nice to have 2 monitors, mine doesn't flip to portrait, but still, I feel a lot more productive. I'd definitely look into getting another monitor.

[Hero101]

Wow such awesome responses from everyone. Thank you all so much for your input :)