this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Programming

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I understand the concern, but readability and comprehension are way more important than line length. If the length impairs readability, it's too long. Explicitly limits are terrible. Guidelines, fine.

Ultimately, you do you. I still think your crazy and I think your argument is poor.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes a strict 80 character limit would be bad but that's why modern formatters aren't strict and default to 90-100.

I've pretty much never seen code that would have been more readable had the lines been longer than that.

My main argument is still that shorter lines are more readable. I just think it's a bullshit argument to say that long lines are fine because large monitors exists. I don't see how that makes me crazy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

See, I think length limits and readability are sometimes at odds. To say that you 100% believe in length limits means that you would prefer the length limit over a readable line of code in those situations.

I agree that shorter lines are often more readable. I also think artificial limits on length are crazy. Guidelines, fine. Verbosity for the sake of verbosity isn't valuable... But to say never is a huge stretch. There are always those weird edge cases that everyone hates.