On Thu, 2007-07-26 at 09:58 -0500, Tom Tobin wrote: > On 7/25/07, Duc Nguyen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On a somewhat related note, is it just me or does no django core developer > > follow the "no line longer than 79 characters" note. I like using emacs > > and I have my frame width set at 80 and it bothers me to no end to have > > to scroll to see every line. Turning on line wrapping makes things even > > harder to read! > > I'm starting to seriously wonder if the 80-character line width has > outlived its usefulness. There are various naturally occurring bits > of code that just don't fit onto a single 80-character line, and the > options for chopping it up are all sub-optimal; increasing the minimum > width would decrease the number of occasions on which one might need > to deal with this frustration. Docstrings and comments also find > themselves cramped for space after a few indentation levels. > > I find it hard to imagine a programmer these days who is so starved > for screen real estate that they couldn't handle a width of, say, 120 > characters;
Try to imagine a bit harder then. I'm in that position, for example, even on my desktop. It's much more effective to be able to view more than one window at a time (e.g. the bug report or details in the web window and the terminal next to it), so 80 columns is the right sort of width for that. It's the same reason people have web browser windows at less than 1024 columns sometimes, despite big screens existing. Having to flick back and forth between partially obscured windows is slower. This workflow doesn't work on my laptop, since the screen isn't large enough, but that's a problem with smaller screens. That being said, whilst I strongly prefer 80 character limits, I can handle lines being longer in circumstances, too, for all the normal reasons (some lines just don't break). People seem to forget that one of the key rules in any coding guidelines is "do what the existing code does" (see, e.g., the second section of PEP 8). Thus, our current standards are in not in conflict with PEP 8 or PEP 257. Regards, Malcolm --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
