Until now I've always tried to stick to 80 characters per line and it worked just fine in plain ol' JavaScript, however after adopting TypeScript i...
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Why stick to an arbitrary max length at all?
Make lines as long as is natural for the code without having to horizontally scroll.
In my case it comes in handy when I have 2 files opened side-by-side. I switched to 120 from 80 and it works pretty well for me.
This usually comes from tools like GitHub or VSTS. These will enforce horizontal code scrolling on code comparison if lines are longer than
{x}characters.Now that's the principle.
I think there shouldn't be any definite edged-in-stone approach to maxlengths.
In my case, I simply turn on the text wrap in whatever IDE, and it fits what's right in the viewport.
I like max lengths because I usually work in an IDE with other devs. A shared max length means we can all format our code on save, and it doesn't mess each other up
It's a nice way to have a constraint in your code not to go deep in callbacks or nested statements, not only long variable or method names. These days with wide screen monitors my preference is to have 120 as a soft limit, nicely fits my code and surrounding tools from IDE in one screen. Also fits in GitHub pull request side by side view. It's all about readability, as long as it is not hardly enforced without a valid reason.
We find than 120 is the most readable while still short enough for all the ways our code is displayed (screen, diffs, Bitbucket, etc.).
80 chars gets hard to read when you have longer, more descriptive names like we use in our code.
Not exactly an answer to your question, but an amusing anecdote. I inherited a codebase a few years ago where a previous developer working under a tight deadline was trying to restore some default Bootstrap styling in a CSS file that had been overridden in other places. The "solution" was to paste the entire minified Bootstrap CSS into the middle of the file. So the longest line length in that code was tens of thousands of characters.
It was fun seeing how different editors dealt with that.
Just because machines and tooling can break down constraints, e.g. bigger monitor, better IDEs, etc. that doesn't mean we should neglect the human factor. I think there is a reason why websites, books, or other heavy text mediums have a line length constraint and I think it is because it's easier for humans to read.
baymard.com/blog/line-length-reada...
Too wide – if a line of text is too long the reader’s eyes will have a hard time focusing on the text. This is because the line length makes it difficult to gauge where the line starts and ends. Furthermore it can be difficult to continue onto the correct line in large blocks of text.
Too narrow – if a line is too short the eye will have to travel back too often, breaking the reader’s rhythm. Too short lines also tend to stress readers, making them begin on the next line before finishing the current one (hence skipping potentially important words).
Every now and then, I think it's ok to break the line length rule by a few characters but you should also consider if there is a better way to shorten the long line length.
Nice comment and blog post, but I don't think this is too relevant to code. The blog post is about research in UX, especially continuous text. I personally don't usually read code like a book, I skim through it looking for the context I need. That's why I don't like having function declarations span multiple lines. I typically look for the function name. If I require some more info, I look further right on the line. That's why their recommendation of 50-75 characters per line does not apply to code, IMO. That being said, I like a line width of 120 for code, excluding comments, which I like without a line width limit.
I noticed that code is much easier to read if it's less than 80 characters wide, so I stick very strictly to that.
I see a lot of 120 in the comments, that's just too wide for my brain to read at once.
I know that, like you, I don't like reading overly-long lines.
There's been a lot written about the readability of lines < 60 or > 100 (approximately) in things like blog posts and newspapers and I think that it makes sense to apply the same knowledge to code too.
I stick to 80 and I'm a bit of a stickler about it - I use a lot of panes when editing, so I'll have multiple files sitting side by side; even on a widescreen monitor, sticking to 80 means I can have 3 panes across instead of just 1 or 2.
With the example you used, you can rewrite to fit in 80 chars comfortably just by ditching fat arrow syntax (which is also a handy way of announcing "this is a pure function" to your teammates).
...assuming
ActionCreator<X>just means "a function that returns an x"; I don't know the context of the code. In any case, my point is that the response to a line-length code smell shouldn't just be to see if you can put your line breaks in different places; it's to see if there's a better way to write that line that expresses your idea more clearly.120 for typically longer languages (ts, html). 80 for shell, css, etc. That's mainly just a soft limit so I can fit my editor on half of most screen sizes without losing anything, and the 80 is nice for ssh sessions or vim.
80 column rule is inherited from olden days where
punch cardshad 80 columns.Then back when I was in college, my CS professor urged students stick to 80 columns due to
small monitor screensizes. (He used XEmacs with 2 windows on each side mostly).Given today's monitor sizes and absence of punch cards, there is no reason to stick to the 80 column rule.
Alas, I've seen people writing past 200 columns but that's just pushing it IMHO.
Nowadays, column limit depends on how you or your teammates define them to be.
I usually don't go past 120 columns (using VS Editor Guidelines plugin).
Keep calm and use Prettier
Well this helped to get over it and now I use 80.
It helps because:
Yep! I do use prettier to format my code and have pre commit hook. This works really well.
We all use the same size main monitors and same IDE with a standardized settings file. To get max line length we took the number of characters that can fit on a line without horizontal scrolling and took a bit off for indentation.
I have VSCode set to have a vertical bar at the 75 character mark. I keep it more as a guide rather than a hard rule. If it's going to be past the line by a few words I will then make a line break.
I keep my editor font size pretty large and on my 1080p monitor with the editor taking half the screen 75 characters is off the edge of the screen.
I use 120 characters. Almost all displays are able to handle this width. Realistically, I think that you need to do what makes the code clean and readable. What that means is largely decided by the people that are reading your code.
That being said, I think that the number 80 is antiquated and 120 is better for modern development.
I tend to start it at 100 in Code Style checkers, but I never let that particular rule rise to the level of "throw an error and refuse to build/compile" that some code style rules might deserve.
This is as someone who codes these days primarily in Javascript, followed closely by PHP. But it seems like a fine rule when I've dipped into C#, C++, and Python.
It's also for things like lines being used in email subjects or tickets, and if you spread your logic out across lines, diffs and patches (and therefore your whole VCS) work better. Having overly-long lines isn't the end of the world, but it can be a bit of a smell.
I stick to about 100 chars per line. If it looks like I have to go multiline I'll limit to around 90, but I'm flexible based on how the code looks. I find these limits generally fit within most screen and font sizes I've seen colleagues use. Beyond 100 also starts to become a readability issue with the code -- too much to digest at once.
For comments though I have noline limit and rely on wrapping to format the blocks. It's annoying to edit text that has line breaks in it that aren't meant for paragraph breaks.
We use 120 in our tslint, but there are files where we use tslint overrides - for example ngrx/store selectors sometimes get longish names, and when wrapped, they actually ruin code readability and optical consistency.
120
Mainly I am doing Java and a little HTML and CSS.
Just use the horizontal space provided by modern widescreens of huge size :-)
I go with 100, but still try to fit comments into 80 because I find those are more difficult to read when they break the line or scroll.
No max line length whatsoever. The 80 characters limit is just cargo cult.
If it was cargo cult, people wouldn't be able to come up with any reasons for using it.
80 characters was the width of the old terminals. That's the reason.
That's not the only reason.
I meant people wouldn't come up with any valid reasons for using it now.
80 is as vàlid as 77 or 83. But its original is terminals. Or should It be a múltiple of 10?
For code, I tend to use 80 as a soft limit and 132 as a hard limit (with rare exceptions): 80 so that I can easily have two or more views side by side, and also in the very rare case that I need to put the code on paper, and 132 so it doesn't get too unwieldy (I think 132 was the traditional limit for landscape paper, too). I also tend to code with line wrapping enabled, so horizontal scrolling is not usually an issue.
For in-code documentation and comments, as well as plain text documents, 72 because that's a comfortable width to read, especially in a terminal.
For more text-centric documents that are meant to be rendered like HTML or LaTeX, I don't usually impose a limit because it's awkward to have to readjust paragraphs just so they fit in a certain width, and the source isn't meant to be looked at by the end user. Line wrapping is a must here.
80 is a guide. It's still used as a hard limit (sometimes 79) in a few places and there's no real reason not to use it where you can.
Sometimes languages are verbose, or variable names cumbersome, but that's why it's a guide rather than a rule. On the other hand, it's a small smell if you can't keep your lines to the same length as other developers on the same project...
I like splitting my logic up so that it's easier to remove a line at a time, and I dislike trying to read long, dense paragraphs of any text - let alone code.
120 chars in Python. I find this most useful because of the fact that whitespace matters, and to continue code lines they have to be in parentheses, brackets, or another enclosing language structure, or alternatively (in the worst case) you have to backslash to continue a line. I never backslash Python anymore, I opt to put the code block in parenthesis if I need a line break.
We had a discussion and settled on 100.
I use 120. I still try to keep it at 80 so that I can view it in a command prompt (if needed) without resizing, although sometimes for things like method declarations, deep indentation (especially in languages that don't have good error handling), and nested loops, the extra bump up to 120 is very convenient.
If your code is ever longer than 120, it's probably spaghetti and needs to be refactored.
I really would love to limit myself to 78 characters. At first, I'm using 80, because of, when I open a terminal, I always found that by default it opened for 80 characters (I know I can resize it, duh..). But, when editing in nano, using 80 characters will wrap/scroll the line. 78 characters are my chosen default.
The language I use is Go, and it's pretty good for the limitation I enforce myself. But, actually, I'm considering to move to 120. Why? Because in my screen, the editor minus the left panel (project, tabs, etc) consists of around 120 characters.
I wouldn't say that I'm sticking to it religiously, just really wanted to know whether that was bugging just me or not and what others in community are using.
I stick with the ideas put in the PSR-2 :
github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/b...
"There MUST NOT be a hard limit on line length; the soft limit MUST be 120 characters; lines SHOULD be 80 characters or less."
It always works for me and my style.
Seems like 120 is a middle
Yep. Noticed that length really depends on language verbosity.
Its important the max length when you work with other coders. The code style is more consistent specially if you are using a linter.
What if some one will have a class name 101 chars long? :)
Glitch in a matrix!
For Java, I usually go with 150-200 characters. For Python and bash, I'm in the 80 character camp.
80
Does anyone know of a VS2019 or VS Code extension (other than Resharper) that automatically can hard wrap long lines by a set limit?
I get my favourite readability with 80 :)
I started in python and they recommend 80 dont know why but it just stuck. Now anything else feels weird lol.
120 that's what we use in our company, and I think it fits most of the modern screen sizes
as many ppl mentioned, we are at 120 for both, typescript and python. works pretty well :)