Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] 80-chars limit

[Blair Z. <bl...@or...>]

Nicolas Cannasse wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 05 Oct 2003, Nicolas Cannasse wrote:
> > > I agree that short lines are better but I dislike to break some code
> into
> > > several expressions (or shorten identifier name or other tricks) only to
> > > stick to that outdated 80 chars limit.
> >
> > It's outdated in the sense that our displays and printers can handle
> > better than this. The question is whether humans can. Enforcing this
> > (or another) limit keeps people from writing unreadable spaghetti code.
> > Unless you use extremely long identifiers, which should be discouraged
> > in any case, 80 chars should be more than enough.
> 
> Not a flame, but just some comments about that :
> I just don't like such arbitrary rules made in the name of "protecting the
> programmer from writing bad code". I mean, if a programmer is actually that
> bad then he will write unreadable code no matter the chars limit :-)
> Depending on the programming language, on the ident size and naming
> conventions, and many others factors such as the programmer own style of
> programming, this limit can vary a lot. Fixing it to 80 chars is nonsense.

I agree that nothing can protect the bad programmer from writing bad
code.

However, I don't feel that 80 characters is outdated.  I use the high end
laptop work bought me with a 1600x1200 screen (thank you very much :) ) to
open 6 ssh windows at 80 characters and have each one open to a different
file or task in xemacs or in the shell.  So I would like to make a point of
keeping at 80 characters.

Best,
Blair

-- 
Blair Zajac <bl...@or...>
Plots of your system's performance - http://www.orcaware.com/orca/