The ideal developer toolkit should be independent, ergonomic, work offline, and be cost-effective, using regular glasses as a benchmark for a perfect tool.
The journey from standard keyboards to hot-swappable mechanical keys and programmable firmware like QMK provides a consistent and ergonomic typing experience across devices.
Evolving from single CRT monitors to complex multi-monitor and ultrawide setups reveals a constant need for more screen space, which traditional hardware struggles to satisfy.
Headsets are categorized into Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR), with key differentiators being field of view, pixels per degree, weight, and tracking methods.
Applications like Horizon Workrooms and Immersed allow you to mirror or extend your computer's desktop, creating multiple large, configurable virtual monitors in a VR environment.
By moving beyond tethered solutions, you can use web-based IDEs or terminal-based editors like Neovim to create a completely self-contained development setup on a VR device.
Using tools like SideQuest, you can install Android APKs such as Termux and F-Droid to run a native Linux-like environment, including Neovim and self-hosted VS Code, directly on the headset.
While current headsets are not yet ready for full-time work due to weight and comfort, the experiment shows that keyboards and terminals will remain fundamental developer tools on any future platform.
Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.