from Hacker News

Are character count line limits stupid?

by michidk on 12/13/24, 12:46 AM with 3 comments

• by figure8 on 12/13/24, 2:10 AM

  I've always thought that using vertical space and indentation alone to organize code was a failure of imagination for IDE development. Why can't the IDE allow for and auto-format code in a horizontal line? For instance, I can easily imagine background color shading as an indicator of logical depth. That would be fun to play with.

  And along those lines, why do coding best practices always encourage vertically stretched out logic? Its analogous to writing all literature as poetry. That's clearly suboptimal or at least limiting if you can read multiple ideas in a horizontal line.

  So, I think, ideally, semantically-aware IDEs should allow for any formating and supply dynamic adjusters which can reformat code to the users preference, then save it in a presentation-agnostic encoding.

• by cratermoon on 12/13/24, 1:03 AM

  The author completely misses or ignores the volume of research on line length and readability[1]. "I cannot find a single logical reason for why we would actually need character line limits when writing code - at least when we assume that part of the developer’s job is to structure and format their code in a readable way."

  How about this one: if a developer chooses a smaller line width for readability reasons, depending on the editor to wrap code is a fail. The chance the editor wraps the line at a semantically sensible point approaches nil. Perhaps there's a place for better code editors that wrap according to semantics, but for now, editors don't take it into account.

  Betteridge's Law applies.

  1 "both very short and very long lines slow down reading by interrupting the normal pattern of eye movements and movements throughout the text. " https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234578707_Optimal_L...