Looks like I'm going to be in a minority here.
I've been around long enough to remember the reason for the 80 character
length limit. It predates 13 inch screens, side by side diff
comparisons, monochrome consoles, and TTY terminals. The IBM card punch
had eighty columns, and it was simply impossible to type beyond the
length of the card. If we assume that we no longer have to consider the
physical limitations of cards, we can consider what should really drive
the limit today.
As for side by side diff comparisons, if that were really be our guide,
then probably something like 60 characters would be more reasonable. I
doubt that any of us would like that.
Printers can usually handle 100 to 110 characters without much trouble
particularly if you print in landscape mode.
I find that with today's wide format screens and the Eclipse IDE which
has several useful windows, that 90 columns works pretty well. Although
this setting is only 10 extra columns, the extra space seems to be
particularly useful in avoiding needless wasted space on screen and on
paper.
Cheers,
David
Jeremy Bauer wrote:
It took a while to get used to the 80 limit, but now I like it for the most
part. Like Milosz, I especially like that it facilitates side-by-side
comparisons without the need to scroll horizontally (or the use of a size 4
font).
-Jeremy
On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Donald Woods <[email protected]> wrote:
Yep, same here. The biggest complaint I have is because of Eclipse and its
weird behavior in how it does/doesn't wrap lines sometimes.
Now that we have checkstyle setup and it's easy to discover problems during
a build (without having to rely on Eclipse), I can live with the 80 char
limit.
-Donald
Miłosz Tylenda wrote:
Hi!
I used to hate the 80-char limit but then I realized I quite like it when
comparing files side-by-side. Now I am neutral.
Greetings,
Milosz
Starting a separate thread to discuss the merit of 80 / 100 / 120 / {your
favorite length here} line lengths as a code convention.
Since the project started we've adhered to the Sun code conventions [1]
and
recently introduced changes that enforce this length for source and test
code. This "archaic" limitation has been problematic in many areas, ie
generated metamodel classes.
I think we can all agree that having some limit to line length is a
benefit
and the real contention is about the specific width in question.
Sun's conventions justify 80 characters as being required for some
terminals
and tools. The debate has been taken up on several other sites [2],[3],
with
other justifications listed :
* dispersed development team (some people still have 13" laptop screens)
* it's easier to have multiple files open
* going past 80 characters indicates a problem with the code. (ed.
comment
nice)
* printer friendly
* plenty more justifications mainly from the comments sections.
I am not terribly bothered about where we set the limit so long as we
decide
on one and stick to it. Regarding this limit I think Aaron Rubin [4] said
it
best on the python-ideas list (he was talking about how to break lines
though) :
* >> This is an unsupported, and IMHO largely incorrect, assumption.
*>* >> Several correspondents have noted that they most often overrun
their
*>* >> intended line length by one or two characters. Just as there's
*>* >> nothing magical about the number "80", there's nothing magical
about
*>* >> "81" or "82" either. In a regime of 90-character lines, the limit
*>* >> will most often be exceeded by one or two characters. The same
will
*>* >> happen in a regime of 100-character lines, etc. We'll still need
to
*>* >> break lines, and wrapping them in parentheses will still be the
best
*>* >> way to do that.
*
We started with 80 character columns and I don't think there's a
compelling
reason to change. I may be in the minority though, and if other devs feel
strongly about this issue I'd encourage them to reply to this thread. If
there's sufficient interest in a wider margin we can then start a [VOTE]
thread.
[1] http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/html/CodeConventions.doc3.html
[2]
http://richarddingwall.name/2008/05/31/is-the-80-character-line-limit-still-relevant/
[3]
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/758545/maximum-line-length-of-your-ide-checkstyle
[4] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2009-May/004855.html
-mike
