4 ms·

I have lots of classes and method names that are descriptive but also make 80 chars harder to read. In past I've had to sacrifice readibility to follow strict 8

by ergo14 10y ago

I have lots of classes and method names that are descriptive but also make 80 chars harder to read. In past I've had to sacrifice readibility to follow strict 80 char limit rule it is a bad idea to enforce it. 99% of time you are not doing merges that require you to have 3 side by side buffers. It makes no sense to point this as the main reason to maintain the limit in my opinion. 100 char limit is way more sane, 95% of time 79 is enough for me but for the remaining 5% to enforce it means to actually make it less readable or make more cryptic variable names which is even worse imo..

zepolen 10y ago
I like descriptive names too, EvenToThePointOfAbsurdity, but if the 80 char limit is starting to be imposing, it's usually an indication that code should be refactored as it's being indented too much, or one thing is trying to do too many things. 3 side/side buffers is arbitrary, (it would be 2 on a small laptop display) - and maybe that's why I like 80 characters, it lets me develop on any screen without needing more real estate because the files are long. I mean Angular has iirc 120 characters, and if you take a look at an average source file eg: https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/master/modules/%40angular/http/src/headers.ts https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/master/modules/%40an... You'll see a ton of white space after 80 characters that is 'wasted' - this also eats up into horizontal real estate of another buffer which in the end means you actually have less information on the screen with >80 characters rather than more. In all cases - the code in that file could easily be broken into multiple lines and not lose any readability.
- OJFord 10y ago
  > * 3 side/side buffers is arbitrary, (it would be 2 on a small laptop display) * It's about 1/3 of my 13" 2013 Macbook Air - the other 2/3 is usually a browser. It's also not even about how much horizontal space there is for any reason - it just scans better if you keep it narrower.

by ergo14 10y ago

zepolen 10y ago

I like descriptive names too, EvenToThePointOfAbsurdity, but if the 80 char limit is starting to be imposing, it's usually an indication that code should be refactored as it's being indented too much, or one thing is trying to do too many things. 3 side/side buffers is arbitrary, (it would be 2 on a small laptop display) - and maybe that's why I like 80 characters, it lets me develop on any screen without needing more real estate because the files are long. I mean Angular has iirc 120 characters, and if you take a look at an average source file eg: https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/master/modules/%40angular/http/src/headers.ts https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/master/modules/%40an... You'll see a ton of white space after 80 characters that is 'wasted' - this also eats up into horizontal real estate of another buffer which in the end means you actually have less information on the screen with >80 characters rather than more. In all cases - the code in that file could easily be broken into multiple lines and not lose any readability.

OJFord 10y ago
> * 3 side/side buffers is arbitrary, (it would be 2 on a small laptop display) * It's about 1/3 of my 13" 2013 Macbook Air - the other 2/3 is usually a browser. It's also not even about how much horizontal space there is for any reason - it just scans better if you keep it narrower.