3 ms·
> It's more of an anatomical restriction: the resolution of the human eye and the field of view. The restriction on code length to 80 has absolutely nothing t
by bcrosby95 6y ago
> It's more of an anatomical restriction: the resolution of the human eye and the field of view.
The restriction on code length to 80 has absolutely nothing to do with the resolution of the human eye or your field of view.
> For example, if we had 10 meter-wide monitors we won't be able to see them entirely from a close distance. Increasing the distance will require to increase the font, so the number of characters per line we can use doesn't change much.
Again, this isn't relevant to the question of say, 80 cols vs 100 cols vs 120 cols. No one seems to be saying cols should be unbounded in length.
> Not so long ago I showed a piece of code on a mobile phone screen to a colleague, saying he should use shorter lines. He replied I need a larger display. When I opened the same code on my desktop display the lines were not fitting the editor window almost the same as on the mobile screen. (We keep phone closer to eyes so can use smaller characters).
I'm not sure how this is an argument for 80 cols other than the already addressed "I limit my development environment to 80 cols".
- burntsushi 6y agoI have a certain monitor width, distance from that monitor and font size. Those constraints dictate how many open file columns I can fit across my screen. I'm happy if I can get two columns, so that I can edit files side-by-side. 80 columns is the approximate sweet spot. The suggestion that people should just get "better hardware" is so completely asinine, because it neglects to realize that the quality of hardware might not be the problem. For example, instead of having a single very large monitor, I use three somewhat smaller monitors because that enables other productive workflows.
- bcrosby95 6y agoHe never said to buy better hardware. He said the code should no longer be formatted based upon what he believes to be a niche situation. People in this situation can, in fact, still edit code. You will get line wrapping. It's not optimal, but neither is editing 80 lines when you have 100 available.
- burntsushi 6y agoYou missed my point. My point here is that reasonable people can disagree if you just take a second and think about others' perspectives, workflows and development setups. But no, Linus is literally arguing that reasonable people cannot disagree because he's arguing that an 80-column limit isn't "reasonable." That's a bunch of bullshit.