physical coding environment

ednark

recently i have seen a few posts about what editors people use, and what music people listen too when coding and I have noticed a trend with people i know to move to having multiple monitors...

so i will generalize and pose this question to people. what is your environment while coding, at home and at work?

me, for both home and work:

1 desk, 1 spinning char, 2 monitors, mp3's and lots of soda.

the spinning chair is a must and ever since i tried two monitors i can't live without. i usually have one coding monitor and one for results / references.

also i can't stand laptops, they are too tiny.

just thought it might be interesting to see what the other kids are up to i this area.

Quevas

Just the essential: one monitor, an uncomfortable chair and an Italian-English/English-Italian dictionary to write on this forum. 🙁

_SuperString

Just the one monitor for me !!, i know two monitors can be handy for graphic designers but I dont really see the benifits for programming.

heres my work set-up:
1 monitor (17")
1 slow pc (pii)
1 desk (very messy)
1 scrolling mouse (scrolling doesnt work)
multiple cans of juice (irn bru, coke, lilt)
1 phone (never rings though, luckily)
1 swivel chair (with arm rests).
0 music (at work, boo, hoo)
3 drawers full of books (PHP, DHTML, UML, Perl, SQL, etc..)

Bunkermaster

work environment :

2 computers (both vaio one laptop one tower)
2 phones/fax
1 printer/scanner/xerox/fax
1 monitor (17" sony)
1 hifi system (sony MD, CD, pluged on PC sound card)
1 chair (oak, tough one)
1 tucows foam cow (stress focusing techniques)
1 desk Ikea, very convinient
1 velleda white board
Quake 3, UT2003, EF, Soldier Of Fortune 2, etc. (for loooong breaks during loooong nights)
a very full humidor (cubans 😃)
that's about it (with me coffee mug)
Former companies doc (Rational, Compuware, etc...)
2 tons of books (PHP, Python, Zope, UMP, RUP, RAD, C ANSI, EJB sepcs, etc.)
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Quevas

looking his pc and chair
(the only things in all the room)

searching for the right word in English in the dictionary

I'm so depressed..........

greg252

Sounds like overkill. but:
1) iMac running Apache/mySQL/PHP with BBEdit
2) IBM laptop running a style sheet generator, XML generator and ftp
3) Sometimes a *nix box with GIMP
4) a handy-dandy KVM switch
5) Corner desk with hutch
6) Great office chair
7) enough cat5 cable to build a fence
8) pens and legal pads-a-plenty
9) Slinky(rainbow)

A great view of the tree and NPR or news radio in the background.
For those frustrating nights, I break out the GG Alllin tapes.

Bunkermaster

can't think of slinky without seeing Ace Ventura singing the slinky song waiting for it to reach the ground at the bottom of the 10000 steps stairs leading to the monastary 😃

ednark

ooo i totally forgot about the white boards. one 4x3 foot and one 8 1/2x11,a must have for thinking.

i refer to mine as e-boards... as they have all the functionality of a futuristic pen sensative electronic lcd tablet blackboards as i have seen at trade shows. well minus the save functionality, and remote viewing.

and i am however missing a foam mascott of any kind. 🙁

jeremuck

well unfortunately, I have no job programming,

but at home,

7ft table (cluttered to the point of things constantly falling off)
bookshelf full of books (php, C++/C, Java, Linux, AI blah blah blah)
the best chair they had in the store (I figured it was important)
1G pc
17" monitor
Logitech optical mouse (again, important)
small 3 x 4 white board

oh and various piles of more stuff on tables and floor.

I was curious about what tools people use to design...

diagrams? white boards? pencil? pen?

ednark, I'm jealous of your white board/ e-board

can I have it? is it real useful? how much do they run for?

ednark

for design i'd like to say i used a uml program or something as sexy....

phase 1 - small white board,
phase 2 - pencil and paper
phase 3 - whiteboard
phase 4 - computer

and use the small whiteboard for thinking, so i don't waster paper. but i end up just scribbling on paper after paper with a pencil, then end up putting the mostly final design on the big whiteboard.

i tend not to hit the computer till i can see the whole concept in my head.

the white boards can be expensive though, around 30-50 bucks when i was looking for mine.

perahps the internet has a better deal.