Thanks. For bonus points, I'm a single dad raising a little girl with no mom in the picture. She likes science and math, and has a few ideas for a website or two :P
I'm a single father of an 11yo boy. He started saying things like "I want to make...." when he was 8ish and then I showed him a some html and got him his own domain to play with and call his own. But when I showed him view-source, it really took off. He went to some site that archived sites from 10 years ago of some games/toys/shows that he likes and viewsourced them all and started adding features to his site (actually plural now). After playing with that for awhile, he wanted to make "forums" and etc., and so needed some php. First with text files, then mysql. It has been fun watching him.
I'm taking it slow with her so I don't totally put her off it. She's starting to ask what I'm doing while I'm at my computer, and she was shocked that I actually made a website that she could access and use from a different computer. "You made this? Wow!"
First, I'll mirror my distaste for the lack of 1200 height screens. I recently purchased a laptop and had to settle for a 1080 screen over a 1200 due to the exorbitant prices. Disguisted.
However, I've been programming for 23 years and I love the wide format. I can comfortably fit two columns of code if I wish, or one column with room for other apps on the side (IM, my taskbar to the right, reference material, etc.).
Complaining because your screen is too wide makes no sense. Stop maximizing everything.
I had a 17" powerbook for years with a width of 1440 and it drove me mad because I couldn't quite get 3 80-column terminals to fit comfortably (I think I settled on 2 79-column and one 80). Today my minimum width is 1600 pixels, precisely because the way I develop involves having multiple files open, each in their own terminal, all side-by-side. I can never understand people who only have one file visible at a time, but I guess they'd probably think I'm mad too...
As for height, how many lines of code do people put in a function? In the languages I tend to use, functions of more than fifteen or twenty lines are a bit excessive, and probably need to be refactored. Why is there so much demand for vertical real-estate?
Yeah, everything is switching to the 1080p TV glass. I bought a Dell Latitude this year just before they switched as well. Those 120 pixels really make a difference.
"The astute reader will point out that there are many 15″ notebooks out there that feature 1920×1200 LCD’s. To this, I will refer you to my previous point: that widescreen sucks for software development and most business purposes."
After rereading parts of the article, I concede your point. He is hating on width, but he also complains about lack of vertical height. I may have been sleeping when I read it the first time.
I agree that vimdiff is great on a widescreen. I like it so much that I do all my development with vertical splits now (instead of horizontal splits as I used to). ^w v
Respect.