Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

hackernoon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 40 posts

Re: Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

#31

Post by crystalnewb »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #12
jonathankoren wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone has problems seeing small text, why are they using a such a small screen?

Possibly for weight reasons? I'm in my early to mid 30s with decent near-distance eyesight, but adding my Dell 12.5" ultrabook to other things I routinely need to carry is increasingly starting to hurt. My next laptop bag will probably be a backpack to mitigate that, but it still doesn't make weight irrelevant. Anyway, one doesn't have to go to that extent to make the point: as per the sibling reply from d_, even on…

Hit the weight room, a 30 yo human should be able to carry at least 30 lbs with no problem for a few miles. My daily driver is a P51. You might also consider on of the pieces of luggage with wheels and an extendo handle.

Re: Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

#32

Post by drcharris »

The 80 char limit was, IIRC, based around the capabilities of fixed-width terminals and dot-matrix printers. It's not magical.

I have the luxury of writing code only for myself, so I can maximise devotion to my 'personal style' and not worry about other people's opinions.

I'm all about information density, and since on 99.9% of monitors the vertical axis is the short one, and the horizontal axis is the long one, I want to save as much vertical space as possible. This is also why I can't stand horizontal tabs (thank you, Tree Style Tab).

On a 27" 4K monitor I get two side-by-side files open in my IDE, with a 10-point font, at 160 char wrap, with vertical tabs. This fits my style because I favour inline comments which maximises my use of the vertical space by not needing another line.

Luckily my eyes are still good enough to read this!

Re: Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

#33

Post by jkaplowitz »

crystalnewb wrote: post #30
d_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked. I have a 17 inch laptop screen (uncommon and has to be sought for these days). To hit 120 characters on two terminals side-by-side requires 9pt font. That's definitely not something everyone can manage. I think 120 might even be pushing the limits of conscientiousness.

I was speaking of lines of code in a full screen text editor, I'm sure there are many programs that when displayed side by side on a small screen 120 chars would be too many. But let's avoid the strawman here. So 2 terminals side by side 120 chars each, you tried to display 240 per line in actuality? Do i have it right?

Not a straw man - on a laptop away from readily available external monitors, it's quite common to want to see two things at once while doing work. We're discussing the line length policy for a single line of source code in a single file, not the number of characters that can visibly fit side by side on a screen.

There's definitely a bit more flexibility - not infinite - when you only consider the full-scale case. But one is often less productive with that as the only viable option, or else one has external monitors in which case in that usage pattern the laptop is effectively a desktop.

Re: Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

#34

Post by jkaplowitz »

crystalnewb wrote: post #31
jkaplowitz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly for weight reasons? I'm in my early to mid 30s with decent near-distance eyesight, but adding my Dell 12.5" ultrabook to other things I routinely need to carry is increasingly starting to hurt. My next laptop bag will probably be a backpack to mitigate that, but it still doesn't make weight irrelevant. Anyway, one doesn't have to go to that extent to make the point: as per the sibling reply from d_, even on…

Hit the weight room, a 30 yo human should be able to carry at least 30 lbs with no problem for a few miles. My daily driver is a P51. You might also consider on of the pieces of luggage with wheels and an extendo handle.

You'll be missing out on a lot of good colleagues if you set your policies based only on what works for young healthy in-shape people with the dominant tech industry locations and lifestyles.

Re: Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

#35

Post by hprotagonist »

in the python world, i really like Raymond Hettinger’s talk “beyond pep8”, in which he advocates “90-ish” as a line width to shoot for, rather than a slavish fetishism for 80.

This especially matters when you start doing dumb things to codebases like 1-space indents, abbreviated variable names, etc. for the sole purpose of making a linter shut up.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-BqAjZb8M

Re: Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

#37

Post by notacoward »

hprotagonist wrote: post #35

in the python world, i really like Raymond Hettinger’s talk “beyond pep8”, in which he advocates “90-ish” as a line width to shoot for, rather than a slavish fetishism for 80. This especially matters when you start doing dumb things to codebases like 1-space indents, abbreviated variable names, etc. for the sole purpose of making a linter shut up. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-BqAjZb8M

> This especially matters when you start doing dumb things to codebases like 1-space indents

Too-small indents are bad for many of the same reasons as too-long lines, only even more so. The main argument in favor seems to be the desire to cram as much as possible into each line, which is a code smell of the first order. The main argument against (which I find much more compelling) is that it becomes really hard to match up the indentation levels to see the true structure of code without artificial aids. Besides being ugly, those faint vertical lines won't be there in every situation, such as when you're looking at code in a review tool or in gdb or a "primitive" editor while you scramble to fix a problem on a production machine that doesn't (and shouldn't) have your favorite heavyweight IDE installed. Ergonomics matters, and it's about more than personal preference.

Re: Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

#38

Post by tzs »

I generally aim for 80, but if that starts to get ugly I widen my terminal to 132, which I argue does not revoke my old school credentials because we had 132 column terminals in the old days (VT100, DECWriter II LA36).

Re: Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

#39

Post by d_ »

crystalnewb wrote: post #30
d_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked. I have a 17 inch laptop screen (uncommon and has to be sought for these days). To hit 120 characters on two terminals side-by-side requires 9pt font. That's definitely not something everyone can manage. I think 120 might even be pushing the limits of conscientiousness.

I was speaking of lines of code in a full screen text editor, I'm sure there are many programs that when displayed side by side on a small screen 120 chars would be too many. But let's avoid the strawman here. So 2 terminals side by side 120 chars each, you tried to display 240 per line in actuality? Do i have it right?

Small screen? Again, 17in is rather difficult to come by in a laptop.

The real fallacy is in denigrating the side-by-side workflow. Just having every window be fullscreen would be madness.

Re: Does Column Width of 80 Make Sense in 2018?

#40

Post by pacavaca »

Just found this provocative post on HN (the other HN). The interesting part is that it comes from a Java programmer. When I was writing Java and using big IDEs myself, I was too advocating for longer lines. And now? Now I'm all Vim for 3 years, and 80 char limitation never made more sense than now! Being able to split your screen whichever way you want and still read the code is precious.
Post reply on HN