Timeline for Why is 80 characters the 'standard' limit for code width?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
21 events
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| Apr 28, 2022 at 7:58 | comment | added | sola | Very good note about the three-way merge. Actually this is one of the major arguments next to code-reading speed/efficiency. I have worked on project with 90+ chars line length limit and merging was really bad (inefficient and error prone) especially in periods with high concurrent development activity. | |
| Oct 19, 2021 at 22:03 | comment | added | gnasher729 | @Mark Booth, drawing conclusions from line length to “your identifiers are too long, or you are trying to do too much in one line”, is just cobblers. | |
| Apr 12, 2017 at 7:31 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/
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| Jun 23, 2015 at 21:25 | history | bounty ended | CommunityBot | ||
| Dec 14, 2014 at 18:12 | history | edited | Mark Booth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Updated broken link with one to the wayback machine.
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| Apr 3, 2014 at 11:13 | comment | added | Mark Booth | @mattnz I think that you have that the wrong way around. Dot matrix printers from the 1970's were almost certainly intended to duplicate line printers from the 1950's. 132 column compressed text was certainly intended to allow you to print out text meant for wide printers (11" at 12CPI) on narrow paper (8" at an eye watering 16.5CPI). | |
| Mar 31, 2014 at 23:37 | comment | added | mattnz | 132 Was also the the text width of a standard 80 column Dot matrix in compressed mode (circa early 1980's). I suggest its far more likely the Eclispe default configuration on 1920 wide screens is because 132 is so prevelent, 132 was obsolete before Eclipse was written... | |
| Mar 31, 2014 at 22:55 | history | edited | Mark Booth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 19 characters in body
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| May 22, 2013 at 17:07 | history | edited | Mark Booth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added a link to the museum history of science page on historical typewriters.
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| Apr 30, 2013 at 17:05 | comment | added | Basic | @MarkBooth I won't drag it out too much as it's a bit of a religious issue but one that gets flagged by PEP8 for being too long is ... ` (8 spaces) return HttpResponse(JsonLib().encode(Ret), content_type="application/json")` and yes it could be broken into multiple lines but it's scattered throughout various controllers and doesn't seem like it's worth splitting up except for meeting the 80-char "standard". | |
| Apr 30, 2013 at 16:46 | comment | added | Mark Booth | @Basic there is an argument that if you can't work within an 80 character line limit then either your identifiers are excessively verbose or you are trying to do too much on one line. Most people are more comfortable with narrower columns of more lines than very long lines, since our eyes and brains have been trained for years through books, newspapers and column width constrained web pages (like this one) which mean that we find it hard to scan and comprehend very long lines. | |
| Apr 30, 2013 at 15:21 | comment | added | Basic | @rkulla So for how many decades will should we continue to impose an 80 character limit? Sure for some languages like C with short identifiers it's fine but for others like C# with long identifiers, it can be a pain. Fortunately, we impose a 132 char limit where I am now but I used to get very annoyed with 80, especially in Python | |
| Jan 3, 2013 at 17:34 | comment | added | rkulla | A good reason to try to continue using 80 characters even on larger screens is that many programmers prefer to use smaller terminal (or even IDE) windows, rather than having to keep them full-screen at all times. | |
| May 24, 2012 at 11:43 | history | edited | Mark Booth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 14 characters in body
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| May 15, 2012 at 19:23 | history | edited | Mark Booth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Updated given comments.
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| May 15, 2012 at 18:28 | comment | added | abatishchev | what about Word wrap option? | |
| May 15, 2012 at 17:50 | comment | added | jcolebrand | Wow, I get 230 characters across in my IDE ... | |
| May 15, 2012 at 17:44 | comment | added | Ross Patterson | Not to start another speculation-fest, but Hollerith's cards had circular holes, not the rectangles of the IBM 5081 et al. And IBM's later foray into cards, the System/3 format, had 96 circular holes in 3 horizontal bands of columns. | |
| May 15, 2012 at 16:29 | history | edited | Mark Booth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Reworked the first para.
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| May 15, 2012 at 16:23 | history | edited | Mark Booth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Answered some other aspects of the question.
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| May 15, 2012 at 16:10 | history | answered | Mark Booth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |