3 ms·
> Just inertia from the times where teletypes were a thing. As in, a mechanical printer that served as your console. That's more than inertia, that seems to cr
by mhitza 3y ago
> Just inertia from the times where teletypes were a thing. As in, a mechanical printer that served as your console.
That's more than inertia, that seems to cross the threshold for ceremony. When was the last time that actual printers/teletypes were used, the 60s?
The inwrtia part of it is people imitating what they already see on a project (cause why would you disrupt something as a newcomer on a project) and line length rules which I've seen come up from time to time along the years (not sure if a 120 character line length is enforced nowadays within the kernel)
- MobiusHorizons 3y agoThere are benefits to keeping code less far to the right on the line for easy reading. I review a fair bit of code these days, and I’ve never once wished someone used more characters for their variable names. Long variable names have a tendency to make the code they are part of wrap a lot and become hard to read. I think a lot of people think that a verbose variable name is always better, so they end up lazy and don’t try to figure out what makes the variable interesting in context.