I think that depends partially on the verbosity of the programming language (e.g. type declarations, casting, templating) which eat up a lot of columns, and ver

I think that depends partially on the verbosity of the programming language (e.g. type declarations, casting, templating) which eat up a lot of columns, and verbosity of coding style. In the latter case, if your variable names are `name_of_person' rather than simply `name' (which should be obvious by context), you're also going to have problems. The first one might be a legitimate issue. The second issue, I've noticed, I've never had a problem with, even in heavily indented lisp: - If your variable names are too long, they must not be obvious from context, and your function/method/block is doing too much. Refactor. - Consequently, if the line is too long, perhaps it's doing a little too much; short lines with limited logic help with code comprehension the same way short methods do. Splitting code into multiple lines generously allows you to clearly indicate how parts relate to one-another. My line width is 76 characters max to allow for 3 columns for line numbering + one space after it---if line numbering requires more columns that that, maybe your file's too big as well. Some will disagree on that last point, but I consider that in the same light as I do line length and function size. For OOP especially where there's one class per file, it's certainly a code smell if you have a long file.