80-character lines: There is no good basis for limiting to 80 characters a line.
Historically, this value comes from the fact that IBM punch-cards had 80 holes in a row. Because of this, our first terminal screens could display 80 chars on a line. We have great screens today and 80 chars is just too short, since one often have to sacrifice other principles of readability (i.e good naming) to respect this limit.
I find the sweet spot to be a hard limit of 120 chars a line, with a soft limit at 100.
D.R.Y: Good advice for very early beginners, but it should always be said that a little repetition is usually much better than added complexity. D.R.Y should be a very flexible guideline.
Good TLDR, I would add two things tho:
Historically, this value comes from the fact that IBM punch-cards had 80 holes in a row. Because of this, our first terminal screens could display 80 chars on a line. We have great screens today and 80 chars is just too short, since one often have to sacrifice other principles of readability (i.e good naming) to respect this limit.
I find the sweet spot to be a hard limit of 120 chars a line, with a soft limit at 100.
Thank you for the additions!
I didn't know that about the 80 character rule, nice
A little repetition is much better than unnecessary complexity...fair enough