
Hackers' screen shots - davidw
After reading the article on fonts, I thought it might be kind of fun to share screen shots of our working environment.  Just remember to edit out anything sensitive!
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nostrademons
As of now, the technology count is:

    
    
     Languages:
     4 Ruby
     4 Python
     4 C/C++
     2 Java
     2 Lisp
     1 HTML
     1 Scheme
     1 Mathematica
     1 Javascript
    
     Editors:
     8 Emacs
     5 Vim
     1 Visual Studio
     1 Eclipse
     1 Netbeans
    
     Browsers:
     8 Firefox
     2 Opera
     1 IE
    
     OS:
     11 *nix
     8 MacOS
     2 Windows
    

Possibly modulo a couple of miscountings. If people had multiple programs open
(like one person with both Firefox and IE, or my own setup with Windows +
Ubuntu VM), both are counted. I omitted obvious jokes, like the Commodore 64
screenshots or Don Knuth's desktop. And it only includes editors I could
identify, so whatever you Mac folks are using to edit your Ruby isn't
included.

~~~
akkartik
Nice. My desktop is a few years old, so subtract one from the C/C++ camp. I
use python and ruby equally, though, so it doesn't help break that tie.

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hailpixel
I seriously don't understand how you people can work with all the visual
clutter. I like a much more naturalistic approach:

<http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/217/workspacefh6.gif>

~~~
mdemare
Nice. <http://inglua.com/blog/images/c64.png>

Lack of syntax highlighting is very easy on the eyes.

~~~
hailpixel
I think its time to make a new texteditor / micro-ide

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abstractbill
I'm sure my desktop would look pretty stark to most people. That's the way I
like it though. Basically I only ever have two windows open, both maximized -
Emacs and FireFox. I spend 90% of my time in Emacs - this is what it looks
like:

<http://abstractnonsense.com/desktop.png>

(that's not my code btw - it's a random python library).

If I knew of a way to hide even more superfluous stuff (window decorations,
the menu bar) I would do it.

~~~
davidw
Wow - couldn't you squeeze in some more emacs windows on the right to visit
more files at once? Or is that kind of thing just noise/distraction? I could
certainly see some people preferring the simplicity to my more noisy 3 emacs
windows and 4 rxvt's.

~~~
abstractbill
Yup, it's just noise to me. I prefer to have the other buffers loaded in
Emacs, but not displayed on the screen where I'll be distracted by them.

My perfect dev environment would go as far as blanking out everything in my
peripheral vision too - maybe a set of VR goggles that _only_ displays an
Emacs window, dead center ;-)

~~~
vegashacker
I do the single plain window of emacs thing too (though I use Terminal, not
the built-for-mac Emacs GUI, and I only go 90 chars wide on my window). I
usually run three UNIX shell buffers inside of emacs, in addition to all the
source code buffers. I never go to the mouse while in Emacs (because it
doesn't do anything), which helps me move quickly.

<snobbery>I get a bit frustrated when I need to look over someone's shoulder
while s/he is doing some programming related task. So many people move very
slowly thru their environments. I want to show them the way...</snobbery>

I wasted about 2 hours of my life once trying to trick out my Mac to be that
"one Emacs window and nothing else" setup that you're talking about. I never
really found anything that worked, though.

~~~
damien
This may seem like an obvious point, but have you tried Linux (or another Free
OS) with a tiling window manager? OS X does give you a nice prepackaged
experienced, but if you love to tinker and have complete control to customize
anything, Linux is ideal. And you can always dual boot, if you just want to
try it out part time. =)

~~~
vegashacker
The thing is, when I'm doing anything but programming (web surfing, watching a
DVD, playing music, etc.) I want the smooth, easy-to-use, pleasant-looking
experience that I get on a Mac. I periodically try Unix window managers to see
how they're doing, but they honestly always seem pretty clunky to me.

But let's say for a minute that I did go the Unix window manager route. What
would you recommend if I wanted to have one "mode" where basically everything
is stripped away (no menu bar, no windows, nothing -- just a shell), and
another mode which was your standard GUI? It would have to be fast to switch
between the two.

~~~
earthboundkid
Install X11 on your Mac and set it to run in fullscreen mode. Then install
xemacs or whatever and you're set. When you're in X11, fullscreen programming.
When you Cmd-tab away, OS X goodness.

------
mqt
<http://www.csh.rit.edu/~apox/images/screenshots/20071031.png>

My four desktops merged into one image. I'm using FreeBSD+ion.

~~~
slashcom
Girl Talk: excellent choice of hacking music.

~~~
imsteve
Downloading now. If you're wrong then die. Free beer otherwise.

~~~
r7000
he was right.

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henning
this is from some loser named Don Knuth: <http://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/screen.jpeg>

~~~
amichail
This would be better:

<http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/screenshots.en.html>

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Zak
<http://64.74.153.35/~zak/screen.png>

Normally 1680x1050, but I'm using an external monitor until I find time to get
my laptop's LCD fixed.

~~~
mdemare
Can you live with that font? No anti-aliasing and Courier New?

~~~
Zak
It was good enough for...

Actually, yes. It's quite readable and fairly compact. I've tried a few other
fonts (most of the ones mentioned in the fonts thread on here) and found most
of them take up more space or are less readable. Dejavu Sans Mono might look
better with anti-aliasing turned on, but most of the time I've found anti-
aliasing just makes fonts look blurry.

~~~
Shorel
Lucida Console is both more compact (the reason I use it) and more readable.

Just my 2 cents.

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mdemare
Tada: <http://inglua.com/blog/screenshot.png>

~~~
dcurtis
Wow, Mac OS X in non-widescreen. For some reason, seeing it like that is a
jarring experience.

~~~
mdemare
I hate widescreen, I'd use portrait mode if my monitor could pivot.

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brlewis
My emacs-centric working environment:

<http://brlewis.com/y/2007/devscreen.png>

It's slightly contrived, in that I usually have only one buffer open. I wanted
to show that my environment involves switching back and forth between my
ideas.txt file where I aggressively prioritize, and the actual BRL and Scheme
files where the real coding is done. A large portion of my work is done in
35-minute train rides.

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ajmoir
[http://farm1.static.flickr.com/133/396296975_1f2e6f41a6_b.jp...](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/133/396296975_1f2e6f41a6_b.jpg)

Linux running Xfce.

Couple of VMs a Xnest and DVD player. And I say again the current way we
layout apps is broken. I have a wide screen monitor and most apps do not
resize. I anybody working on something to fix this so that an app designed for
640x480 renders a reasonable size on my screen.

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kingnothing
[http://aycu09.webshots.com/image/32248/2004585555465429860_r...](http://aycu09.webshots.com/image/32248/2004585555465429860_rs.jpg)

Software: Ubuntu 7.10, Netbeans, Opera. Hardware: 2 x 1280x1024 monitors.

Edit: Whoa, apparently webshots doesn't like PNGs. Try this link instead.

<http://img444.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotzh0.png>

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brianr
Here's mine:

<http://www.stanford.edu/~brianrue/workspace.png>

I just alt-tab between Zend and firefox/konsole; at work I run another screen
of Firefox off my windows laptop. I don't know how a lot of you can live with
so much clutter on your screen, it drives me crazy.

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utnick
you vi/emacs/console guys can hate, but deep down inside you wish your ide was
as tight as this :) :)

<http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/4349/desktopel7.jpg>

~~~
abstractbill
Heh. I think it's funny that the trend in modern IDEs is for your code to get
squished into a smaller and smaller box in the middle, surrounded by a ton of
random crap. It's the exact opposite to the environment I strive for.

(also, _"Solution Explorer"_? That was the best name they could come up with?)

~~~
akkartik
To be fair, he seems to have enough space for code. horizontally at least.
Monitors today have plenty of space for random crap. But the bottleneck isn't
real estate anymore, it's focus.

What we need is for the other windows to gradually fade out when focus is in
this one for a while. One of the video plugins/sites on tv-links had this
feature - as you watched a show for a while the rest of the screen would
gradually fade out.

Or we could go with two vertical panes: <http://akkartik.name/desktop.html> :)

~~~
tyler
your font makes me want to stab my eyes out... otherwise, nice. :)

~~~
akkartik
Response: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=74768>

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davidw
Here's mine:

<http://www.dedasys.com/Screenshot.png>

~~~
BrandonM
That's about what mine looks like, except I usually have a browser window
under the main terminal window, and I only use two workspaces instead of ten
(!)

~~~
davidw
The browser is located in the lower left hand workspace, so it's just an alt-
down arrow away from the workspace.

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joshwa
here's mine:

<http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/3408/picture2jd3.png>

Sorry for all the obfuscation.

Tiger, TextMate, Terminal.app, Locomotive, Firefox, Thunderbird, Adium,
Twitterpod. A few more in the titlebar (Desktopple, SpritedAway (obviously
turned off for now), MenuMeters), and plenty more in the Dock.

~~~
noahlt
That's a beautiful color scheme. Where/how can I get it?

~~~
joshwa
which color scheme? if you mean the rainbow gradient I used to cover my
private info, that's just one of the default patterns built into photoshop.

Adium is using the standard "Aqua" theme.

TextMate uses the standard "Twilight" theme.

~~~
noahlt
I mean the one for syntax highlighting, which I suppose is TextMate (I don't
use it).

Incidentally, there is a vim version here:
<http://niw.at/articles/2006/08/06/twilight>

------
andrewfong
<http://andrewfong.com/stuff/Picture%201.png>

Firefox is hidden and gets called up as necessary. If I have access to a
separate monitor, it gets shoved onto there.

------
hauk
Leopard, of course, with 4 spaces and xcode split-screen, Ubuntu 7.10 running
under parallels. <http://tildeslash.com/images/screenshot.png>

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nmeyer
Eclipse, vim and Opera. I like my syntax highlighting scheme, but not many
people like colors as much as I do.

<http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/59/workspace.PNG>

~~~
davidw
Wow, that really _is_ colorful, isn't it!

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kingnothing
I have no clue how so many of you are only working on one monitor. Maybe
you've never tried using two, but there's absolutely no way I could ever code
again on just one.

The difference is night and day.

~~~
dfranke
Screen real estate is like a drug. Addiction creeps up on you quickly, and the
more you have the more you think you need. I used to be perfectly content with
one 17" monitor. Now I'm looking for a bigger desk so that I can add a fourth
22" LCD.

~~~
kingnothing
A fourth?

Wow. That's awesome.

------
jey
<http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/screenshots/ion3-2.png>

OK, not really my desktop. But ion is quite cool.

About 50% of my programming time is spent staring at a maximized vim instance,
and about 30% staring at a maximized firefox instance:
<http://jey.kottalam.net/tmp/screenshot.png>

~~~
omouse
I actually do run ion3. The only problem I've had so far is that some of the
Alt+ keyboard shortcuts interfere with some Emacs shortcuts. One off the top
of my head: Alt+G.

~~~
aaroniba
I just remap/unmap the ion shortcuts to get out of the way of emacs. I have a
friend who swears by setting ion's Mod1 to capslock, but my pinky just can't
handle that.

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llimllib
<http://billmill.org/static/images/desktop.png>

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nikolaj
my work workspace (OSX) <http://nikolajbaer.us/media/desktop.jpg>

at home its similar, but xfce4 terminals and pidgin on xubuntu.

~~~
tlrobinson
viewbug?

~~~
nikolaj
ah, a project for a client.. damn i tried to snuff out things like that. It's
just yet another media sharing site, we (I) built it in django with ffmpeg.

~~~
henning
there was some tutorial on recovering original text from gaussian blurs i saw
out there, i.e. blurring isn't like a hash function. to be safe you have to
totally black it out.

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nostrademons
Mine: <http://labs.diffle.com/screenshot.png>

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adnam
SDF has something like this: <http://www.deskshots.org/>

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damien
Standard Emacs/terminal/Firefox on my laptop:

<http://img524.imageshack.us/my.php?image=desktopak6.png>

When I'm docked at work, I usually have Emacs on the monitor and terminal on
my laptop screen.

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programnature
My setup in Mathematica...

<http://www.programnature.org/Screenshot.png>

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david
<http://webdever.net/screen.png>

I could use a bigger screen...

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Goladus
<http://www.goladus.com/images/wokr1.png>

Cygwin, firefox, emacs, C, yacc, putty, outlook, python. (There's php in one
of the emacs windows)

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jmtame
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/67154802@N00/2473330790/sizes/l...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/67154802@N00/2473330790/sizes/l/)

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alaskamiller
i have 6 spaces open on my macbook pro. i run firefox, safari and mozilla. use
adium, transmit, photoshop, terminal, and ituens on a daily basis.

