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But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more

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Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more

#51

Post by eeh »

alex_young wrote: post #7

Isn’t there some merit to the notion that long lines are typically either overly verbose or mentally challenging to understand?

I think there's some merit to this, but it's a bit strict.

Suppose I'm at 80 characters, and everyone agrees this is a reasonable line. Then suppose I refactor a variable that was 3 characters and its now 12 characters, and everyone agrees this is a better variable name. Now my 80 character line is 89, and it's suddenly unreadable?

No, that's still readable, it's just longer.

Personally if I see a long line, I try to shorten it, but I'm okay to leave it long if I think longer is better.

Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more

#53

Post by winrid »

kstrauser wrote: post #30
winrid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A note on your last sentence. Once I used my Win10 laptop at an interview at Apple. The interviewer saw me drag one window the the side, snap it, and then select another window to fill in the space. He said, wow, Windows is really nice! :)

The #3 productivity app on the Mac App Store is a $2 app that enables this on Apples: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

I'll have to try this.

Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more

#55

Post by SparkyMcUnicorn »

I'm hoping that one day I'll be programming in AR or VR, unbound from the limits that come with a statically positioned (and sized) screen.

There's still a lot of issues that need to be solved, but I'm hopeful all the pieces will come together in a relatively short amount of time.

Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more

#57

Post by u801e »

saagarjha wrote: post #27

I'm a big fan of softwrapping. Not because it's inherently prettier or something, but because the results are consistently better on more platforms because they can softwrap at what you've set the column width to be and not some arbitrary number someone thought was a good idea. (I have a similar argument for using tabs, but I digress.)

This is what Linus has said in the past regarding soft-wrapping: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56611...

Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more

#58

Post by elihu »

I think 80 columns is a bit narrow for modern monitors, but still lines shouldn't be excessively long either, so you don't waste screen real estate on vast expanses of white space. Something in the neighborhood of 100 to 120 columns is probably about right these days.

Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more

#59

Post by winrid »

u801e wrote: post #33
winrid wrote: post #12

This!! At people are insisting we use a max of 80 columns for the linter. It's a huge pain compared to 100 or 130 columns and doesn't help readability. Everytime someone tries to argue for it I want to suggest we swap their Mac for a Commodore 64...

Well, the C64 had a 40 column display width for the BASIC interpreter, but I think it was possible to have statements that wrapped and could go up to 80 characters (I may be wrong about that though).

The more you know! Thanks.
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