  Using multiple monitors is commonly thought to improve productivity, but this
is hard to check experimentally. We use a survey, taken by 101 practitioners of
which 80% have coded professionally for at least 2 years, to assess subjective
perspectives based on experience. To improve validity, we compare situations in
which developers naturally use different setups -- the difference between
working at home or at the office, and how things changed when developers were
forced to work from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The results indicate
that using multiple monitors is indeed perceived as beneficial and desirable.
19% of the respondents reported adding a monitor to their home setup in
response to the Covid-19 situation. At the same time, the single most
influential factor cited as affecting productivity was not the physical setup
but interactions with co-workers -- both reduced productivity due to lack of
connections available at work, and improved productivity due to reduced
interruptions from co-workers. A central implication of our work is that
empirical research on software development should be conducted in settings
similar to those actually used by practitioners, and in particular using
workstations configured with multiple monitors.
