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Discussion on: Why I keep pestering everyone about long lines

 
alainvanhout profile image
Alain Van Hout

My language of choice is Java. The 80 character limit that you mention is most likely either part of an old Java style guide (the most recent Oracle Java guidelines are from 1999), or a result of inertia (Google apparently moved to 100 characters as a compromise to those still preferring 80).

Java has a well-deserved reputation for verbosity (which I don't see as a negative), which means that while most of the lines of code I come across tend to be 100-120 character wide, a fair share are 120-150.

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greg0ire profile image
Grégoire Paris

Might be ok indeed for Java, I did not practice a lot but I still remember "System.out.println" vs "echo", so it could indeed make sense in that language.

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alainvanhout profile image
Alain Van Hout

That's a very mild example. For some laughs and groans, try googling "java long class names" :-).

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greg0ire profile image
Grégoire Paris

lol even german does not produce such long words