I do all my coding on an 11" air. It really is nice to carry around everywhere, since I take it back and forth to work every day (and a coffee shop right now).
As for screen real estate, well I have a 24" monitor at home but have gradually stopped using it. I can only really focus on one thing at a time, and the screen size is big enough to display that one thing comfortably. I have Quicksilver set up so F3 switches to web browser, F4 to sublime, F5 to my terminal, and it's muscle memory at this point. If I want to switch focus, rather than turn my head, I lift a finger and it replaces what I'm viewing.
I've lately started playing around in Pixelmator (an OSX-only pared-down version of Photoshop), and have started thinking about breaking out the monitor for that, admittedly. It would be nice to have all my tool palettes, list of layers, etc, not obscure the image I'm working on.
As for screen real estate, well I have a 24" monitor at home but have gradually stopped using it. I can only really focus on one thing at a time, and the screen size is big enough to display that one thing comfortably. I have Quicksilver set up so F3 switches to web browser, F4 to sublime, F5 to my terminal, and it's muscle memory at this point. If I want to switch focus, rather than turn my head, I lift a finger and it replaces what I'm viewing.
I've lately started playing around in Pixelmator (an OSX-only pared-down version of Photoshop), and have started thinking about breaking out the monitor for that, admittedly. It would be nice to have all my tool palettes, list of layers, etc, not obscure the image I'm working on.