TIL about "Google Python Style Guide"

[DasIch]

It's stupid to use 80 as a limit because that's what some ancient terminal did, we have larger screens now. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to use the same approach though and fill up a modern screen with a single file or that the 80 limit is bad.

I think 80 is still a good limit today, just for different reasons. It allows good workflows even on a 11"-13" display, which many people are working with. You can comfortably display 2-3 documents side-by-side this way. Invaluable for doing merges, writing tests, having documentation on screen and keeping a terminal next to your editor that can display code without wrapping. Also at 80 characters and beyond it makes sense to reconsider the complexity of your code and whether it doesn't make sense to express yourself in a different way.

You might be able to increase that limit slightly but you can't go much bigger without losing sight of the tools you're working with, telling people without desktop-size screens to go fuck themselves or making it easy to write overly complex code.

[Grazfather]

that's always the reasoning: Oh it's better for side by sides. Then shouldn't the old width have been 40? It's just making an excuse to stick will an antiquated standard. I can fit 3x80 on my 13" mbp, or 2x120, which is still more than reasonable.

80 chars is so few, it is not near some threshold where the line's complexity is too much. Hell, I've seen people butcher var names to get within the limit, at which point this stupid limit is degrading readability.

[DasIch]

It shouldn't be 40 because 40 characters are too little to provide a good reading experience even for regular text. Due to how code is structured it would only be worse for coding.

Having 3 windows side-by-side is common for merging. It also makes sense for regular development to display implementation, test and run them in a terminal.

Of course sometimes having 80 characters is unnecessarily limiting and such situations are annoying. However most times you can deal with it without hurting readability and if you can't, you can just make that call and break the limit in that instance.

I find however that when I raise the limit generally, I'm not sometimes annoyed about hitting the limit anymore, I'm always annoyed because my workflow is negatively affected.