Comments on: Is the 80 character line limit still relevant?

By: Bats

Bats — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:46:49 +0000

The 80 character limit is derived way back when they began punch cards ` 1890′s. Based on the size of the current dollar bill, you could only get 80 characters across. Like most things it is a carry over that serves no further purpose, but carries on ” just because this is the way it has always been done. This was done right up to the 1970′s, by IBM.
Bats….

By: Aaron Toponce

Aaron Toponce — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:07:07 +0000

There isn’t a hard fast rule that can be applied to all scenarios. The fact
of the matter is, you code the way you code; you write the way you write.
If you prefer 80, then great. If you prefer 120, great. If you prefer
unlimited, great. In terms of yourself, do what you want. In terms of
working with others, it’s probably best to communicate a standard among
everyone, and stick with it. In terms of dealing with others online, it’s
probably “best practice” to keep email wrapping at 72 characters, and code
at 80, just like you should bottom-post when replying to email threads, and
compose your email in plain text, not HTML. Netiquette is rarely taught,
and hardly understood.

By: Micah Elliott

Micah Elliott — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:27:17 +0000

80 characters is an important limit for many reasons. Actually, I stick to 72 for most everything, including all coding in any language and in email (2 chars for each >-reply).

* Many debuggers add 8 chars with line numbers
* Some printers expect 80 chars not exceeded
* Formatting tools (lint, perltidy, etc) will generate warnings)
* Most programmers you’ll share code with will have their textwidth set to 72 or 80. When they see your code extending to 120 chars they’ll yell at you.
* ESR says so

There are actually some more reasons that I can’t name off the top of my head, but the most important factor beyond these historic limits is *vertical code density*. Most lines will be much shorter than 80. So if you keep all other lines within that (short), you will have better uniformity and compactness. I.e., the greater the line-length variety, the lower the density. Then with a good wide, high-res monitor you’ll be staring at four terminals worth of code at a time. 500 lines on one of my screens. Multiply that by nine virtual desktops (and add a second monitor), and you’re looking at a lot of code!

By: Tomas Varaneckas

Tomas Varaneckas — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:05:42 +0000

I totally disagree that limit of 80 characters is no longer relevant. For example, if you are a Java developer and use tools like Eclipse along with laptop or not too big desktop display (1280px width), you won’t get much more than 80 chars in code window because of additional panels (Project Navigator, Outline). Even if you have a huge 30″ Apple cinema display but you still work in a team where someone uses 13″ MacBook, it’s disrespectful to have line length limits like 120 characters.

By: James

James — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:37:51 +0000

I’ve seen java import statements that have exceeded 80 characters. I personally prefer something larger, so there isn’t any strange wrapping.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:12:57 +0000

…err, I mean “teletype”, not “monitor”.

What good would the teletype be if it couldn’t print out any
of the world’s existing code?

-Matt

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:11:32 +0000

DClayton,

Of course they cared about displaying a transcribed punch card.
What good would their fancy new “monitor” be if you couldn’t display
any of the world’s existing code on it?

As for divisible by 8 and 10, why do you think IBM chose that length
for the punch cards? (of course I’m not at all sure what was the byte
size on the machines the punch cards were designed for.)

By: diegoeche

diegoeche — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:25:39 +0000

I usually work on a 85 char basis. In some strange situations I break the rule. For me is just a matter of aesthetics, but also is easier to put the breakpoints.

Also. when i use VS or emacs I really like a big font (15, 16) so the limit also increases the readability of the code.

By: dclayton

dclayton — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:55:03 +0000

The 80 character line limit has nothing to do with punch cards. They are just two instances of the number “80″ that have nothing to do with each other. Seriously, do you really believe that the inventors of the first TTY monitors cared at all about how a transcribed punch card would look on a monitor? More likely, 80-wide was arrived at due to being evenly divisible by 8 (to facilitate memory mapped character displays) and 10 (to facilitate simple math lookups of the memory mapped display.)

By: Peter Michaux

Peter Michaux — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:13:12 +0000

For usenet posts it is best to use a 72 character limit as it may be wrapped after that. A 70 character limit ensures that at least one reply can be written without wrapping the code.