Whatever the green button does is not maximizing.

Maximising windows stopped making sense to me after we hit 24 inch widescreen monitors. It’s just not something I ever do anymore.

I'm on a 27-inch monitor and I cannot stand non-maximized windows. I maximize because I dislike the feeling of clutter at the edges.

That's your preference. Most of my workday is spent writing code in maximized windows.

Obviously. Everyone is different.

Still, that's a common reaction from people who use Windows. I've used both Mac and Windows on a near-daily basis for the past ~30 years. Both have spent roughly equal amounts of time as my dominant platform. My observation is that maximising is such a default behaviour on Windows that most apps seem to be developed with that mode of operation in mind. Whereas Mac apps tend to be developed without that assumption. This in turn influences how people use apps on these respective platforms.

I have a smaller vertical monitor next to my main monitor which I full-screen my code editor. It looked weird at first but nothing beats having oodles of vertical space, enough to convey entire blocks of code at a time. And even though it's a verticalised widescreen monitor and a comfortably large font, I still have enough width for almost 150 columns of monospaced text—plenty for my personal coding style.

Full-screening code editors on a large horizontal widescreen monitor tends to have no tangible benefit other than to conceal clutter behind a bunch of useless whitespace.

I work with a similar setup, on my company-provided Mac. My IDE sits maximized on one vertical screen, with the other vertical screen divided up into two browsers and a bash console. The laptop screen is usually slack, a database app, or reacreational browsing.

Annoyingly, even at 1440p, the code window gets crowded, if I'm using both the file browser and builtin database client. Luckily you can double-click the tab for the file you're on and everything tucks away nicely.

Though I did grow up obsessing over Windows, so you're right about that.

And for the record, having to hold option to maximize is bullshit. I rarely use fullscreen mode.

> I rarely use fullscreen mode.

Dude, you're missing out. I love using a four-finger swipe on the magic trackpad to quickly jump my side monitor between various spaces: my full screen code editor, a space with two web browser windows (typically showing monitoring tools), and a black screen.

> even at 1440p, the code window gets crowded

I loathe customisation, preferring everything to be as generic and standard as possible, but one thing I have done for my own sanity is assign F16–F19 to hiding and showing sidebars in all the various apps which have them. Typically F16 for left bars, F18 for bottom bars, F19 for right bars.

I've never been a big fan of virtual screens. I'm always losing track of what is where, and why do I need all that anyway when there's the taskbar (on Windows) or dock (on Mac)?

I know the shortcuts on mac and I don't even use them. alt+tab on Windows and Command-Up on mac are the habits I've been able to remember

I agree, traditional virtual screens are a horrible usability nightmare. Wouldn't ever use it on my main screen. But on a secondary monitor that is used for a narrow set of specific tasks, it's a brilliant way to jump between stuff.

Think of it like Cmd-Tab for your side monitor.

A modern code editor (or better yet, an IDE) is going to also have a file browser next to the editor proper, and usually some other panes like embedded terminal etc. You can also use whitespace to provide a minimap of the code on the margin - the larger it is, the more useful it is for quick navigation.

I run VSCode maximized on a 27" monitor, and the editor field is just about wide enough for 150 columns, with all this other stuff.

I coveted the minimap until I got a vertical side monitor. It's not a direct replacement for it, but it gives me enough vertical context to do the work I do without feeling blinkered.

(Sadly my code editor of choice doesn't offer that feature.)

Maximising a code editor allows you to have two editor panes side-by-side. Especially useful for Git diffs.

My terminal, git and diff tools are all floating windows on my main horizontal monitor, occupying whatever size is suitable for that app.

They really fixed that and in Catalina it works a lot like Windows 10, letting you tile apps side by side in full screen.

It maximizes on my mac? Do you have some kind of extension installed?

Option-clicking the green button (usually) maximizes. Full screen in a separate desktop space may resemble maximizing in some ways, but it significantly changes the interaction model when switching between windows, especially when some of the windows are not maximized. Example:

1. Open two apps, at least one of which supporting fullscreen.

2. Open three windows in the app that supports fullscreen.

3. Fullscreen one window.

4. Cmd-tab to the other app.

5. Cmd-tab back to the previous app.

If your window from step 3 was maximized (filling the screen in the same desktop space), you would return to that window, but instead you are now looking at some completely random other window that you were not interacting with at all.

For people who cmd-tab (and cmd-`) frequently to switch between apps, this is super jarring and not at all what we intended to do.

I just double tap the titlebar

With years of muscle memory, I reverted this change back to its original behavior (double tap minimizes the window to the Dock).

In my experience, the green button would make things maximum tall, but not maximum wide. I did not have any extensions. As opposed to everywhere else where maximize makes the selected window fill the full amount of windowed area.

And I'm reminded by other posters that they changed it to full screening (which is also not maximizing), complete with a disorienting animation, ugh. Pretty happy being Mac free again.

The old way was called "zoom" and would make the window fit the content.

Yeah, but what does it really mean to "fit the content", if it doesn't fit the window at any size, but can reflow horizontally - as in e.g. most webpages? Mac apps seem to prefer increasing the vertical size until the window is as tall as it can be, but for horizontal, they usually stop before they reach full screen width - even if this would fit more content on the screen.

It's supposed to be "smart", in a sense that it gives you the largest window size that it considers usable. But that's too subjective an assessment to enable it by default, and even more so to not make it configurable at all.

It typically fullscreens apps for me. I think you can hold down option and press the green button for maximization.