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Re:Black: An uncompromising Python code formatter by ben509 on Friday May 25, 2018 @06:14PM (#17158479)
It was a good call. Some code bases use long identifiers and an 80 column limit gets to be a mess.

And for the 80 column fetishists, you'd have to pry their VT-100 terminals from their cold, dead hands. Disposing of the body is enough of a pain, but worse, you have to find a recycler who can deal with the lead glass in the CRT.

Re:Black: An uncompromising Python code formatter by asah on Saturday May 26, 2018 @09:04PM (#17164978)
The modern argument for lower-line-lengths is the ability for more screens+fonts+UIs to display two blocks of code side-by-side. Somewhere between 80 and 120, you start to force many UIs to wrap. Adding to the subjectivity, approx nobody cares about one line of long code out of 100,000 -- so what percent of code-that-wraps is too much?

To avoid dying on that hill, many eng leads just throw up their hands and give into the 80-column folks, even if it's less productive for everybody else.

The beauty of gofmt and black is that formatting can become a commit hook, so no human wastes time cutting lines manually like some early 20th century typesetter.