Re:Linus on Line Breaks (2020)
by indymike on Sunday November 28, 2021 @04:02PM
(#29372990)
> it is okay to increase the line length limit up to 99 characters
PEP8 is strongly biased towards making code readable, and has helped a generation of programmers start thinking about readability when coding. The line length limit, though, is one of the few parts of PEP8 that introduced defects as a practice. Holding to 80 characters causes:
* string concatenation bugs from breaking up long strings
* errors in expressions broken up into multiple expressions just to fit
* bias to use shorter variable names
My favorite part of PEP8 was the warning about "foolish consistency".
PEP8 is strongly biased towards making code readable, and has helped a generation of programmers start thinking about readability when coding. The line length limit, though, is one of the few parts of PEP8 that introduced defects as a practice. Holding to 80 characters causes:
* string concatenation bugs from breaking up long strings
* errors in expressions broken up into multiple expressions just to fit
* bias to use shorter variable names
My favorite part of PEP8 was the warning about "foolish consistency".