My personal preference regarding line lengths: 80 chars are not enough. And even pep8 says that "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"
So try being under 80 chars but sometimes you can't. Also don't break a line that's like 85 chars if it will just make it more ugly
I'm glad Prospector by default doesn't enforce "the cult of 80 chars" dogma
Now, seriously, that's a matter of taste. I like 80 because it allows me to have two files open side by side on my laptop with a readable font size. As we grow older, what's "readable" changes.
The 2 column use case is useful, but to be honest, rare. I just tested it here and I still need a big monitor and a "medium" font size for 2x80 to work (not too bad on the vision side, but not too great neither). But it is easy for that point to become moot ;)
If you think that "I like 80 because it allows me to have two files open side by side on my laptop with a readable font size." sounds like a romantic attachment to the past you should probably just read it over and over again until it doesn't.
Just to be sure, I just tested on my notebook screen (13"): 2x80 doesn't fit with a comfortable font size for me, so maybe we should start using 70 chars?
I cut my teeth on the Apple II+, with 40 columns. I agree that 40 columns would be silly, but keeping the text column narrow so that eyes don't need to move too much helps a lot. It's a readability trick used in print since ever. From my position, the horizontal screen spans about 60 degrees, which feels excessive. By the time my eyes marched from left margin to right margin, I already forgot what I was looking for.
> Just to be sure, I just tested on my notebook screen (13"): 2x80 doesn't fit with a comfortable font size for me, so maybe we should start using 70 chars?
Sure, YMMV. Even when that turns out to be too small for you, less text per line in the editor leaves more horizontal space for something else, for example a file browser sidebar or a terminal. I've done 2x80 on netbooks for what its worth, but the font size that required probably wouldn't be comfortable to me today.
I run into this in Django a lot with my chained ORM queries. The usually tend to be like 10-15 chars to long. And in this case you have to line break on the parameters or on a ‘.’ which is ugly as well.
While not related to Python, I feel like whenever I write JS code, especially Vue I have a terrible time with line length.