Vim, vim, vim, vim, vim, vim, vim, vim, vim, logging, bacon, irb. I try to keep large methods I'm actively editing on the big windows and reference material on the smaller ones. I also arrange them physically to match the control flow--the deepest methods in the stack live to the left, and successively higher ones live to the right, up to the controller and view for MVC. I usually have an IRB session open to test new ideas, one window for running the test suite, and one to watch the logfile or run the server.
On the other monitor, usually docs, whatever I'm building, and more docs. On a single 24" display (at work), I usually fold the docs over my bacon/irb terminals. I run 6 workspaces in Openbox. Almost everything has a hotkey.
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Folks at my office know me as "that guy with all the terminals". I think part of it is that my working memory is not fantastic, and that I'm a really visual thinker. Having everything laid out in space really helps me keep track of a complex, modular system.
When I find myself with many vim instances running I tend to start giving them different color schemes to make them easier to differentiate. More often, though, I have things split across 8 virtual desktops.
(Same for shell windows. Too often I've forgotten where I was. Having, say, the shell to a remote server use a yellow background alerts me that this is not my local box.)
Haha, no, that's the default scheme with slightly tweaked console colors. The difference is in content--some of them are mostly comments, others are HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Ruby.
Good find on the color scheme page though; I'm gonna have to play around a little with those!
Got a link for bacon? I haven't come across that in the context of programming tools (except insofar as tasty fried pig products are generally beneficial to programmer productivity).
I'm currently up to 3 x 24" monitors, and am doing my level best to talk myself out of a fourth. The luxury is nice, when you can waste screen real estate without a care, but it's as addictive as heroin.
I'm not advocating you stick with a 9" screen, but be careful with the lure of adding monitors!
The keyboard isn't actually all that large. Those are 30 inch monitors. Total horizontal screen space is 4.25 feet.
The drawer was surprisingly comfortable as a wrist rest, too--but I tended to alternate between in the drawer and on the desk, depending on how much paper I was working with.
It's a pretty standard Rails hipster setup on a Mac using TextMate as the editor.
I'm using a 27" Dell U2711 display.
The left hand Terminal is used for monitoring autotest (an automatic test suite runner for Ruby/Rails) and messing around with the interactive Ruby shell (IRB), git, etc.
The right hand Terminal is used for monitoring requests as they come into the development environment's web server.
The Windows XP Professional is running on VMware Fusion and used for IE testing. I use Visual Web Developer 2008 for debugging in IE.
I've got two Chrome windows, one for API documentation and one for testing, with a permanent Developer Tools window at the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
IE6 yes. I use VS because IE Developer Tools doesn't offer sophisticated enough JavaScript debugging. I work with large JS-heavy projects, like entire clients built in JS that talk JSON/REST to a backend server.
Not my site, but you may also find http://usesthis.com/ interesting. It has short interviews with well-known developers/designers that focus on the tools they use and how they work.
tl;dr - Basically just Emacs and Conkeror on Ubuntu. The combo of xbindkeys and devilspie help me not have to worry about the WM; apps for which it makes sense are full-screened for me. Emacs does pretty much everything for me including git, shells, IRC, and IM. The only thing I leave Emacs for is browsing via Conkeror (which feels a lot like Emacs) and the occasional photo edit in Gimp. For working on remote hosts and pairing with remote devs, tmux is a blessing.
All this on a 1.1kg Thinkpad X200s with a Kinesis Freestyle keyboard. Nexus One with Cyanogen is used as a 3G modem when I'm out and about.
Django site. WingIDE, two terminals for runserver and test django commands respectively, and the browser (currently showing my tool for viewing and debugging data in the app).
There's a space in the top left corner because I have the left monitor in a vertical setup and the right in a horizontal.
Left monitor = coding, research notes
Right monitor = testing, virtual machines
All running Windows 2008 R2
Firefox with Firebug, Web Developer Toolbar, Greasemonkey, Gears, Page Saver
Visual Studio 2010
VIM on the left; on the right top is a terminal, each tab is a different virtualenv, on the bottom is a bpython shell. All my other screens (OSX) are running Chrome, Mail.app/Adium and VMware (lots of that).
Dual 22" widesceen monitors. left is mac mini, right is Fedora. I use synergy+ to share the mac keyboard and Logitech trackball between the systems. Workspaces separate out distractions - 1 is a pair of gnome-terminal sessions with screen running on each and lots of vim. 2 is firefox + vimperator, 3 thunderbird, 4 xchat, 5 for virt-manager and 6 for misc stuff.
I ran xmonad for a while and found I really liked the full-screen orientation, but missed being able to cut and paste from terminals easily, so now its GNOME with everything full-screen. I've re-mapped the keys in Fedora to take advantage of the command key on the mac keyboard, so I can work most of the day without touching the trackball.
At work I have a Windows laptop connected to a dock with two monitors. I have a Kinesis freestyle keyboard. Most of my development is done on a remote Linux box, so pretty much everything I do is through SSH. I use a variety of software to make this as pleasant as possible:
dtach - this is a life saver whenever I get disconnected from the interwebs. It detaches a process from the controlling terminal.
dvtm - a tiling terminal manager. I used to use gnu screen but I prefer the layouts that dvtm offers. This plus dtach replaces 99% of what I used screen for.
As I said I used to use gnu screen. However I didn't like the limited layout options so I started using dvtm and would nest it inside screen so that I could detach from a session.
However I felt it was kind of silly to be using such a heavy/complex program such as screen for one feature so I switched to dtach.
And actually as long as you set file permissions correctly (dtach uses a file as a socket) you can share terminals with others using dtach.
Terminal and Emacs on OS X. I have VMWare Fusion running XP with cygwin and rxvt, Emacs, and Visual Studio 2008. I write C# code in Visual Studio and Ruby code in Emacs on Windows for our main project, and I do most everything else (mostly Clojure, some Ruby) in Emacs and Terminal on OS X. Org-mode is a crucial part of my daily routine.
On the physical side, I use whatever 17" NEC LCD this is here, plugged into a 13" MBP. I occasionally go into the office and use another monitor, so I also use an Apple Wireless Keyboard (the aluminum one) and a Logitech laser laptop mouse.
Monitors are cheap nowadays, why can't everyone just get the dual 24+, 27, or even 30 inch monitors? Why have to stay with the smaller screen where one can go big?
And here I am, looking for new monitor, and the best deal so far is 21.5" for 300 euro... But it's not TN and it's certainly not an Acer.
edit: ... and it has the same resolution than the linked 27". What use is large screen if you can't show more stuff with it? Waste of desk space, if you ask me.
There is a lot more to a monitor than it's physical dimensions. The 27 inch display that you linked has a similar or lower resolution than most 23/24 inch displays and is a tn panel with limited viewing angle, color reproduction, and overall clarity. There are many good options for quality 24 inch (1920x1200) panels at reasonable prices but 27/30 inch panels at resolutions that make those inches worth having (2560x1600) are still quite pricy.
Mostly for grouping. In general I use SciTE for code, Notepad++ for everything else (I use zillions of text files).
Two separate applications give two distinct icons in taskbar, allowing me to switch fast between two groups (as opposed to figuring out which content tab in one editor has the right file).
Also, I like them both, and don't have a heart to drop using one of them :). BTW I do the same with browsers (and OSes, I keep "affair" with Ubuntu in VirtualBox).
Boomerang-shaped desk with two monitors: one large, one small. The large monitor shares space with Windows apps and the VNC to my Linux session. On my Linux fvwm2 desktop I primarily use konsole to tab around different xterms, and gvim + NerdTree to edit my RTL source code.
Almost every hardware designer I know uses vim. I guess we're not very lispy.
Desktop computer, running Windows XP (looking to upgrade computer, and then move to Windows 7).
2 Monitors, 26" Samsung and a 22" Asus.
Most of the time, I've got open Sublime Text for coding, Chrome for browsing, Firefox + Extensions for debugging sites, Photoshop, and a few command prompts for mercurial and django commands.
This was not specifically for showing my coding development but my computer setup. Linux on the left 2 monitors, Windows on the right 2 for VS2010 (dayjob).
12 work spaces (I prefer not having more than 2 or 3 windows in a work space). Contents depend on what I'm working on, but right now - 4 with emacs (3 different projects), 2 with browsers, 1 with IM. The rest contains terminal windows and one or 2 file browsers.
L shaped desk with 3 monitors on the long leg - 2 24" monitors hooked to a PC and 1 24" monitor hooked to a Mac Mini - sharing 1 wireless keyboard/mouse via Synergy. The short leg of the L has a Dell 10V with Ubuntu.
at work: iMac + 13" macbook with synergy. iMac usually has chrome, textmate, thunderbird, and titanium all on one workspace. fullscreen iterm on the other. adium, itunes, irssi, etc on macbook screen.
at home, same macbook with an external monitor. one workspace is iterm on the right screen, usually photoshop, adium, + other misc apps on left. other workspace is textmate on right screen, chrome and cyberduck (if necessary) on left screen.
i'm fairly newbish... juggle 1 of (zend studio | eclipse | vs 2010) with photoshop, filezilla, putty, firefox, and notepad++.
currently i'm developing php that runs on an ec2 box w/ memcached... i can't get true memcached on windows and not really a vim/emacs/whatever hardcore text editor type. also need windows for photoshop and whatnot. any tips?
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