I’ve been secretly judging really hard recently as I’ve been observing how
people, specifically developers, use their available screen real estate.
I’m a huge proponent of using 100% of my screen and like Jeff Atwood,
I don’t care about having some flashy wallpaper because I don’t intend to ever
see it.
In fact, I just had to check what my background was because it had been a minute
since I had last seen it 😉
So here’s what I’ve observed recently. Seems many people just stack their
windows up and are seemingly reluctant to maximize their windows. I was thinking
that it was perhaps a trait of more junior developers, but I’ve been seeing the
same with senior level people.
What’s been very interesting is that the most productive people I know are all
maximizing their screen real estate. Full screen windows, fully utilizing all
screens available, et cetera.
There’s something to be said about having everything you need available at the
same time and on top of it having it available at the largest size that you can.
For me, my ideal development setup is having a terminal and a web browser
occupying 50% of the screen, split down the middle.
I’ve been doing this for years now and it was easy to accomplish with
Spectacle on OS X and right out of the box with Gnome’s window
snapping.
Are you somebody that doesn’t maximize your screen real estate? I’m super
interesting in hearing why you don’t, please comment below!
