i'm a programmer (well a rookie) as well, doesn't bother me much to scroll down a bit more often.
Not an expert either, just somebody who's had some college courses, is generally interested in the subject and does some coding when he has time (well, I did do a PHP website in the past few months due to taking a break from college, but that's the only actual business deployment program of mine for the foreseeable future :lol: ).
Regarding vertical scrolling, I often work with split terminal consoles (they are sort of important/useful on Linux), and when I start tiling them the vertical space comes in very handy. And since I try to avoid the mouse as much as possible (slow!

) and do all window switching by keyboard I do not like it when I have to scroll.
I actually have an extension on my browser that lets me scroll using the "hjkl" keys (it's one of the Vim extensions, don't recall which one at the moment), so I don't have to use the mouse for browsing as often as normally.
and get a second monitor, once you use two monitors you will cry in despair when you have to go back to only using one. it's soooo good, especially for browsing and coding.
Totally agree on dual monitor, my dad has that setup and I've worked on his machine on a few occasions. Although having said that, I switched to a tiling window manager last fall (
i3) for my website project and have to admit, it's almost as good. Not quite, but almost.
It provides enough virtual desktops (I usually use around 4 to 7, by default it provides 10) and the tiling thing works very nicely once you've gotten used to letting go of trying to control how large your windows are :lol:. I switched after having realized that my workflow had slowly evolved to a point where I was doing exactly the same thing as a tiling window manager does (namely, tiling my windows), but since I was doing it manually I was losing a lot of time adjusting my window sizes with the mouse and moving them around. So I thought why not switch to an actual tiler and haven't regretted it.
The tiler allows me to switch between desktops and windows quickly and precisely using my keyboard (a modifier key and again "hjkl") so it allows for insanely fast switching between and moving around of applications/windows.
Best setup for programming/coding for my personal preferences would probably be three 24" 1920x1200 in portrait mode. Shit for watching movies or playing games (the bezels would bother me quite a bit

), but awesome for programming.