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
#2I started using a 132 Column wide terminal about 15 years ago, then I increased the vertical size so its 132x25, then x30, then x40 - and for some special service stuff I'll make it even bigger yet.
Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more
#3I spend a lot of time writing code on my laptop, and while that could display two 100-column terminals side-by-side, I prefer to also be able to see other windows on my screen while having text at a size that doesn't strain my eyes.
Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more
#4I remember bikeshedding with my coworkers about this topic a few years back while coming up with lint settings. We ended up analyzing all current line widths and realized that something like 98% of lines were under 110 characters, so that is what we ended up using.
Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more
#5I couldn't agree more. Our company standard for Python line length is at 99 characters because that seems like a nice balance between wide enough to show more information, but narrow enough that it tiles well. I think it's much worse for readability to have narrow, tall blocks of code that you have to scroll around in more.
Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more
#6Many programmers are averse to line wrapping plain text files (especially source code), which has never made much sense to me. There's great support for it in like every editor.
Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more
#7Isn’t there some merit to the notion that long lines are typically either overly verbose or mentally challenging to understand?
Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more
#8I spend a lot of time writing code on my laptop, and while that could display two 100-column terminals side-by-side, I prefer to also be able to see other windows on my screen while having text at a size that doesn't strain my eyes.
Even on very large high resolution screens, it's nice being able to tile that many more files on the screen. I think 'narrow' source code is advantageous no matter your display.
Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more
#9I remember bikeshedding with my coworkers about this topic a few years back while coming up with lint settings. We ended up analyzing all current line widths and realized that something like 98% of lines were under 110 characters, so that is what we ended up using.
I think a lot of terminals just set that as the default window width. No real reason for it, I usually snap to half the screen width immediately anyways. That turns out to about 105-120 characters width. Some people might just not resize it most of the time. Especially on Mac where efficient window management just isn't a thing.
Re: But no, 80-column terminals in 2020 isn't “reasonable” any more
#10I hate it when zealot coworkers reformat code to 80 columns. It almost always gets much less readable in the process.