This describes the hardware for the Ultimate Development Workstation

Ultimate

Display and pointer: To me, the absolute ultimate development workstation would have a table like an architect's table (pictured here [4]; you'll need to scroll down on that page). Except the entire tabletop (except a border) would be one huge touchscreen. In order to avoid the problems that would obviously arise from such a surface, the touchscreen would respond only to the special fingertip contacts. The idea is that you could buy an ordinary pair of thin gloves that are comfortable and fit, and then attach the contacts to these gloves. This means that you would have an absolutely huge surface area. I also think that different fingers should have separate contacts; the idea being that left-click and right click could be done with different fingers. Windows would no longer take up the full screen; when working on a document, you could either spread multiple pages out across the desk, or work on it in one window, and drag things in and out of it.

Input: That covers the display and pointing devices. While I like to think that speech (or thought) input would be available, there's often nothing better than a keyboard for programming. Having the keyboard displayed on the screen, and typeable there would be great, but for ergonomics sake (ie. to cushion the fingers, rather than the shock they would receive constantly tapping a hard screen), a keyboard (much like the current ones) would still be a necessary programming option. It would need some sort of rubber feel to keep it from sliding on the angled table.

Available

Of course, I don't know of any commonly available hardware that would make the above scenario possible. Thus I'm also going to describe what I regard as the ultimate development workstation constructed out of components that I already know exist.

Display: I know of nothing that would suit better than the various multi-monitor setups available. My favourite drooling monitors are those from Zenview [5], especially the Zenview Arena Ultra HD [6]. I wish I had affiliate links for these :).

Input: As you saw above, I still think keyboards are the ultimate input device. I'd recommend 2 or more keyboards for the ultimate development workstation. One for standard input, and one dedicated to hotkeys. The idea with the hotkeys is that they'd be programmed on a per-programming-language basis. For example, at the press of a keystroke, a C programmer could have the following code appear:

 for() {
 }

Of course, that's only an example; they should be reprogrammable.

Other keyboards could be added for any additional languages you wish to type in. This would obviously be a boon for internationalisation.

Wearable

Obviously, these ultimate workstations are not very portable. For portable use, you'd want something else. While I'm no expert on wearable computing, I'd want something like the following:

Display: The idea would be a head-mounted display. The best thing would be one that is mounted where the bill of a cap would normally be, so that it would be accessible and wearable at all times, but it would be possible for people to switch themselves from looking at the computer to listening to people by a simple eye motion.

Input: Non-programmers may think I'm nuts, but I'd like a keyboard for this too, a light keyboard on neck strap, much like a guitar, but of course much lighter; I got the idea from the elven decker [7] from Shadowrun (scroll down the page in the link above).