Ask HN: How many characters per line do programmers typically prefer?

Re:Ask HN: How many characters per line do programmers typic... by sikosmurf on Monday April 25, 2016 @03:25PM (#11566644)

Personally, I prefer 120, but I realize it is a preference. That said, I am irritated beyond belief when there is a project mandate that all code be 80 characters and no more. Pretty much everyone has a widescreen monitor these days, and the 80 character limit is a relic from the 4x3 monitor days.

Beyond that, I feel like a character limit that low puts a disincentive on the creation of meaningful variable names and function names. Maybe it's a hold-over from my Java days, but I really strive to name my functions and methods something meaningful. When I'm limited to 80 characters, plus proper tabbing, plus general flow control... it becomes incredibly difficult to stay under 80.

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Re:Ask HN: How many characters per line do programmers typic... by dman on Monday April 25, 2016 @03:26PM (#11566653)

If you use tiling window managers, there is still a good reason to stick with 80.

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Re:Ask HN: How many characters per line do programmers typic... by RevHaze on Monday April 25, 2016 @03:49PM (#11566817)

I've been using some form of tiling manager for 4+ years now (herbstluftwm at the moment, though with stints using i3, awesome, dwm, bspwm and xmonad) and I've never had a problem with lines over 80 characters. I tend to use small font sizes, but I can't recall ever getting into a situation where 100 character lines were an issue. I can't recall any of the mangers I've used having a key combo to open up an 80 character wide terminal, though I could be forgetting.

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Re:Ask HN: How many characters per line do programmers typic... by iyn on Monday April 25, 2016 @06:55PM (#11568055)

Do you find herbstluftwm to be better than i3? If so, in which way? I've been using i3 for a few years now, I'm VERY happy with it and I'm curious if/how [0] some other tiling wm can be better.

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Re:Ask HN: How many characters per line do programmers typic... by RevHaze on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @10:51AM (#11572346)

I've been a huge fan of herbstluft since I started using it. Herbstluft's 'frames' definitely take a little while to adjust to and it took a few days to figure out how to fit hlwm's tools to my normal workflow, but I find the manual partition/automatic tiling within partitions system to be my favorite paradigm by far.

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Re:Ask HN: How many characters per line do programmers typic... by msdos on Monday April 25, 2016 @03:52PM (#11566835)

What a widescreen monitor doesn't fix is having to move your head to read those 120 characters. With only 80 characters you only have to move your eyes.

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Re:Ask HN: How many characters per line do programmers typic... by baccheion on Monday April 25, 2016 @03:54PM (#11566847)

I usually don't have to move my head to read 120 character lines.

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Re:Ask HN: How many characters per line do programmers typic... by Someone on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @01:24PM (#11573797)

For reference: on an iPad, I get 61 characters on a line in the HN input field, and it is about half the screen width in landscape mode. So, an iPad can do about 120 fixed-width characters on a line. I don't think I move my head when reading iPad text in landscape mode.

I expect that people with somewhat normal vision will say the same.

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