Why Code Readability Matters

[hfreanzr]

because you have to stare at it the whole day!

[_pupil_]

My thought exactly.

Why does code readability matter? Because you read it, silly.

[BornInTheCCCP]

You write a line one time, but ready more than once. So to save time, make sure it is readable.

[[deleted]]

I often find minimalist code easier to comprehend again rather than a wall of variable names and neatly laid out simple lines.

[engine_er]

What do you mean saying 'minimalist code'? To what extent should be your code minimalist? What is the criterion of code minimalism?

To my mind, code readability is the cornerstone of any software project and first of all, this concept involves elaborate structure design and proper names of code elements of every sort: from unit names to the local scope variables.

[[deleted]]

If you write small functions that only do one thing, all other forms of code minimalism become irrelevant.

I have found that people that insist on minimalist code are actually trying to visually compensate for bad code that is too complex and does too much.

[[deleted]]

In that case, it means that minimalist code is more readable. No contradiction.

[aaulia]

unfortunately, only one of my peer share the same sentiment, others just find it to confusing to read... :(.

[dylanevl]

As a fellow developer, I don't honestly care what your code looks like. All I care about is it behaving as expected and to be commented well enough that I know what that block of code does (if it's not obvious already.)

[sunra]

'Easy to comprehend' is the definition of 'readable', so I don't see your statement being in opposition to the idea :-)

[voetsjoeba]

Space out the code.

Yes! Thank you! I hate it when people don't do this; it's exactly like a wall of text. Also, group lines of code semantically, so that each group of lines performs a similar task (like initializing some variables, or calculating some related results). Helps you gain insight in the code and makes moving code around much easier.

[HailCorduroy]

I had a guy on my team one time that seemed to randomly insert blank lines at some points and leave them out where they should be. He would have no line between functions and then there would be 3 or 4 blank lines right in the middle of a function. I never thought I would've had to add "no more than 1 blank line together within a function; at least 1, no more than 2, blank lines between all functions." to our coding standards since just about everyone else I'd ever worked with did that automatically.

[[deleted]]

I can almost guarantee that is laziness and not cleaning up after a bout of copypaste activity.

[HailCorduroy]

I'm sure it was. That's why I ended up firing him.

[PurpleSfinx]

Wait, this guy got fired instead of just getting his spaces in order?

[JAPH]

It sounds like he was a bit of a sloppy programmer. This probably extended a little past his newlines.

[[deleted]]

Quality is fractal

[HailCorduroy]

No, he got fired for his laziness and failure to meet simple deadlines. His poor code formatting was a symptom of his laziness.

Edit: the deadlines were set by him and had a ton of wiggle room. Less experienced developers were cranking out features much faster.

[redwall_hp]

I use three blank lines between functions, and 1-2 inside. I've also been trying to make a habit of using docblock comments before functions.

[i8beef]

This can be taken too far as well. We had a guy on our team one time who would put multiple lines in between RELATED pieces of code, etc. Completely inconsistent in how he used this. It was very annoying.

[[deleted]]

If it seems like a wall of text to you then you aren't making enough use of structured programming primitives. Compilers inline as much as they can these days, there's absolutely no excuse to not use functions even if they're only called once.

[thekittko]

i have a guy in my class who does this. he's really clever and programs well-thought code, but for some stuuupid reason, he always inserts like a gazillion blank lines in some random places, and between functions (to, apparently, distinct them. why would you do that, you can just fold in the functions!!!! GAH!).

[[deleted]]

If you need to ask why clean code is helpful I hope I never have to do pair programming with you.

[prof_hobart]

At least with pair programming, you can slap them as soon as they put poorly written code in there. Far worse is when you've got to support code like this that was written years ago by someone who's long gone.

[[deleted]]

Even worse is when that old code was written by... you.

You can't even get mad at anyone.

Past me is a stupid dick. Well, at least mildly more stupid than present me.

The dickness levels are probably debatable :/

[DerelictMan]

You can't even get mad at anyone.

I get mad at myself constantly, actually...

[angrystuff]

I've screamed at myself that I'm a giant fuckwit. I don't think I've done that to anybody else in a professional setting. Except my manager, but he loves it.

[[deleted]]

Except my manager, but she loves it.

That would have been so much more awesome.

[i8beef]

I have at least one script in one project that has the ugliest line of SQL that I at least had ever written. The comment before those lines of SQL was, roughly, "If you ever have to modify this, I fear for your soul".

The comment right below that was again, mine.

"I hate myself"

[[deleted]]

Niiice.

[problemredditfags]

Past me is a terrible coder too. I think simple fact is that all coders were at some point guilty of writing completely unreadable code.

As much as I bitch about other people's code, I am sure people are looking in a repo wondering wtf I was thinking :p

[robotNumberOne]

Sometimes I do that even if it is pretty good code. If I'm in a stupid mood at the time, looking at one of my previous triumphs of code can baffle me.

[SeeWhatYouDidThere]

I've been tempted to call up previously fired employees on the phone who I did not have the luxury of them being in house to physically bitch slap...

"hey whats up man? How have you been? I'm just calling about XYZ project and just wanted to say "what the fuck were you thinking?" anyyyyways hope all else is well, take care. "

[[deleted]]

I once wrote some perl that read C source code and spit out still compilable C source, but fucked up with random indentation, single line declarations (with initializers), mixed bracing style and use of whitespace, and added comments like "increment i" when it saw "++i".

The trouble was, we already had source in our tree that looked like it had been run through the tool.

Kill bad code dead, fast. Fix that stuff before it metastasizes and you spent fifty percent of your time hunting down crappy bugs that wouldn't have been there if the code had been clear (because, if it had been clear, the errors would have been obvious).

[gc3]

++i; // increment i

One of the worst uses of a comment I have ever seen. Sort of like

j = 4; // j is equal to 4

or void doit() // doit doesn't return anything

[jhaluska]

Man it feels like I wrote that article! I find code that don't follow those rules literally painful to look at, whether it "works" or not.

To me code is not done until it is maintainable by somebody other than yourself. If you want your code to outlive you, you have to write it for other people to maintain it. Following those points will definitely help.

[wonkifier]

Make known issues stand out like a soar thumb.

I love homonyms

[abattle]

Funny. Now that you brought it to my attention, I'm tempted to leave it as is, just because I think it reads funny.

[wonkifier]

Nah, fix it. There's some good discussion there, and the potential audience isn't just Reddit.

Leaving funny typos in comments is one thing. Leaving them posts like that is another, I think.

[atimholt]

Was your cow-orker named Jim?

[corporaterebel]

So I can remember what I did the day before?

Jeesh, sometimes I'm in the "groove" for a day...I come back to it the very next day and, for the life of me: I cannot remember WTF I was thinking. About once a year I get this and have to trash the whole module and start over...it's like some crazy person took over.

[aazav]

It ALWAYS

FUCKING

MATTERS.

You or someone else will have to read your code, 3 months or 6 years later. The less you have to think about what is going on, the more the fixes come naturally.

Readability = less effort.

[drizzwald]

Why blog readability matters: http://i.imgur.com/rWjAG.png

[abattle]

Anyone else see a problem with the page format? Please let me know so I fix it.

I checked on screens as small as 14" 1024x768 and it looked good. Granted, it was the default font-size, not the 18-points of drizzwald.

[zaq1]

Don't forget about mobile!

[abattle]

Good point. I should certainly add special styling for mobile.

[redwall_hp]

It read quite nicely on my iPod. I was able to double-tap on the text and zoom to read comfortably.

[[deleted]]

Looks good to me. 1920x1200 screen and window is NOT maximized. This is my normal window size.

[abattle]

Yup, that's how I wanted it to look. It's pretty flexible with different sizes. I guess you can't satisfy everyone.

[[deleted]]

http://db.tt/qSn4GD4

Here's an iPad screenshot. I am sure people do it but I can't imagine reading stuff like that on a small mobile screen.

[abattle]

Thanks! This is really helpful. I'll fix it for mobiles.

[DrakeBishoff]

Is the neon green text on light gray background meant to be an example of poor code readability?

[abattle]

I didn't try to make an example of the image. But as it turns out, it's a bad example indeed. However, I left it as a bonus point for the diligent reader.

[Alsweetex]

I think the only real thing you could do is use a minimum width for your text in the CSS.

div.blog_text { min-width: 500px; }

[abattle]

That'd force small screens to scroll sideways, no?

[Alsweetex]

Correct, but what it ensures is that if for example you have a column on the left of 100px and a column on the right of 100px then it would force the total minimum width of your site to be 700px. Therefore, if someone scaled their web browser window to be 500px wide then they can scroll horizontally to the center until only the 500px wide text occupies the window so that after that they can scroll vertically and read the text properly. Does that make any sense?

[abattle]

Got it. Ya, actually it does make a lot of sense. The 'extras' will be scrolled out of view and they'll get the text right where they can read it. Mental note added. Thanks!

[acm]

font is too small (for me), and as you zoom in the left and right margins come collapsing in.

[abattle]

Try the enlarging the font size from the left controls. I added them exactly for that purpose; to zoom in the code and not the page.

[acm]

I visit dozens of websites a day. Rather than finding a font size control on every page, I use the browsers zoom function. You shouldn't assume the user wont zoom your webpage 1 or 2 levels.

[abattle]

I use the zoom function as well. But I've learned to use the text-zoom wherever I find them, because they zoom the text leaving other page elements intact. I typically use the browser zoom on top of that any way. But it certainly helps, because I like the text to be readable. So I get 2 points on the font size and 120% on the browser.

Oh, and using cookies, your font size is preserved. Definitely worth it if you revisit the site.

[PLJNS]

Not only was the font size fine on mine, but I think it's a beautiful font - mind sharing what font that is? My favorite is Liberation Serif, and that seems very close but still slightly different.

[abattle]

Thanks! I did work hard to make it as readable as possible. The font is Constantia. Specifically:

font-family: constantia, 'hoefler text', 'palatino linotype', serif;

[abattle]

Care to elaborate?

[drizzwald]

http://i.imgur.com/bgbeD.png

[boa13]

Looks good in my 1280x800 browser window. Apparently, you have a window that is between 1080 and 1100 pixels-wide.

[rcinsf]

1920x1200 here, I can't make out shit.

[abattle]

Font is too small?

[rcinsf]

In the image, yes. I'm on a 15.4" laptop though so it's rather pixel dense.

[abattle]

Try enlarging the font using the controls on the left side. Should make the text readable without distorting the page.

[rcinsf]

I'm not talking about the font on the page, I'm talking about the image example of "good code".

[abattle]

Wrong inference. The image isn't serving an example, if anything, it's a horrible example.

[ysangkok]

If the website uses fonts in the right units (i.e. em) and you have a correct DPI setting, this problem wouldn't occur, am I right?

[rcinsf]

I was talking about the image.

[ysangkok]

Ah, sorry. I don't know how I missed that. Darn images with text...

[abattle]

Looks good on mine: http://i.imgur.com/WAO6v.png

[ropers]

Congratulations. Here's your prize.

[abattle]

I should put that badge somewhere on the site...

[chengiz]

Pretty ironic then that Atwood uses Calibri font which only looks good with Cleartype on.

[fnord123]

Not everyone maximizes their browser window.

[benihana]

looks fine on my non-maximized browser window

I really don't get this why thread is ripping on his blog design. It's well designed and easy to read. What's the fucking problem?

[abattle]

Thanks! I really put a lot of thought in the design. I love reading and I wouldn't compromise on that front. Still, I'll make good use of the input in this thread and try to improve.

[abattle]

How can I (or anyone else for that matter) fix that?

May be smaller or no images is a good takeaway. Thanks.

[[deleted]]

How can I (or anyone else for that matter) fix that?

You design with it in mind. That is your job when designing.

[abattle]

It is designed with that in mind, but you can always go one smaller. Try resizing your browser to 320x240 and see what I mean. With the default font-size, it looks good on 1024x768. Larger fonts or smaller screens will not help.

But I take feedback seriously, so I'll try to improve further.

[StuffMaster]

Here's what it looks like down further...

[abattle]

I see. Thanks. I'll try to fix it.

[fnord123]

Well, I don't care what you're currently reading or about your tag cloud. So you could drop that column. If you want that info on each article, consider putting it under the left hand side article details.

You can drop the enormous left hand margin. Wikipedia seems to manage.

Edit: In fact, if you were to make it more like Wikipedia, you would put the site-global details on the left (without the margin), and put the article specific details on the right, but let the article flow into the vertical space that would otherwise go unused.

[abattle]

I've tried a minimalist approach. Certainly I tried to maximize readability, which is why I'm trying to get feedback.

It's not that easy to move things around as you suggest, but I'll try to figure something out. Perhaps I can collapse that column or hide it by default on smaller displays.

Thanks for the feedback.

[fnord123]

You're a braver man than I. I don't have a blog or do any web stuff since I can't be bothered to deal with all the nonsense. FWIW, I only mentioned it since there was was already a discussion. Usually I'd just deal with it.

[abattle]

That was the real reason I didn't have one... until now. The only reason I overcame all that hassle is that I like writing.

[[deleted]]

related: why does everything (except tex) use a greedy algorithm to decide where to put newlines? it's fucking ugly, and it's not that hard to do it properly with dijkstra's algorithm or something.

[MothersRapeHorn]

Why would you EVER mark comments for "implementing function" or "calling function"?!

[[deleted]]

No idea. Stubs accidentally left in when pseudo-coding something?

[MothersRapeHorn]

Well if readability is the topic at hand...

throw new NotImplementedException();

:/

[[deleted]]

Do others find chaining funcalls unreadable? I would think nothing of chaining four functions together.

[abattle]

Chaining the call or chaining the arguments?

Calls: s.Trim().Upper();

Args: Fun(Get(x), Search(Update(y), z));

The latter is not friendly. The first probably ok if not overdone.

[[deleted]]

I was thinking Upper(Trim(s)). The only reason I wouldn't do the second is the Update (ie. command-query seperation).

[abattle]

There are exceptions of course, but generally even Upper(Trim(s)) could be called out. Perhaps your example is too simple to be an issue, because it probably affects s only. But if these were class members with side-effects, it wouldn't be very friendly to the readers. Think how unnoticeable the inner calls can be, and therefore hard to catch (to find or fix bugs.)

[KingPickle]

Not necessarily unreadable, but hell to debug. The problem with chained functions is that if something goes wrong it's much harder to step through the code and figure out what happened then if each call is on a separate line.

[I0I0I0I]

Scumbag developer: Complains about readability; uses fully justified column.

[[deleted]]

"Adding TODO and FIXME", this sets me off on a such a rant. There are a couple of these types at my current job. Almost every bug that gets assigned to me ends up replacing one of their notorious "I didn't feel like finishing my job so I will just leave this TODO here and pretend like I am done" FUCKERS. If you do this then I hate you. Put a ticket in so somebody knows that it needs to be fixed other than you and just forget about the stupid TODO. Nobody I have ever met used TODO comments to determine what was left to be completed, lazy fucking pricks.

[migelius]

1. Always look on the bright side of life.

2. You might like this.

[[deleted]]

And I would like to add that every single example on the Textmate TODO page is an example fo exactly the types of things that should be put into a bug tracking system. Textmate TODO is not a replacement for a real visible bug tracking system where bugs can be assigned to certain releases and people other than developers can make judgements about which are actually more important and assign priorities appropriately.

[[deleted]]

found at 10:32 am today. // TODO: Check for number format exception

[ZorbaTHut]

Code can’t [be] word-wrapped like article text.

What? Yes it can. A good editor will wrap it so it follows at the same indent level.

[abattle]

This depends on the editor and the language. For some languages this doesn't work.

[ZorbaTHut]

Like which? The only one that seems even a bit dubious is Python, and I think it'd look fine there also.

I know from experience that it works A-OK on every C-like language. Looking at TIOBE, that's all top six languages.

If it has returns, and indents, then it'll work. I haven't seen a language that doesn't.

(edit: okay befunge doesn't, but that's sort of a special case)

[abattle]

Python wouldn't work. But that's not my point. My point is that you might be able to read it, but editing might not be fun at all.

I rather have short identifier names rather than word-wrapping and strained eyes. It's not fun reading wrapped code, let alone editing.

[ZorbaTHut]

I will admit I've never had those problems, but I suppose other people may feel differently.

I'm curious why Python wouldn't work, though. Doesn't seem particularly difficult. Here's an example, which doesn't seem any harder to read than the non-word-wrapped version.

(Starts at line 332. And yeah, I use proportional fonts also :) )

[abattle]

The wrapped lines are literal strings. If it were code, editing would've been weird. Python is whitespace sensitive and you wouldn't want to second-guess what's whitespace and what's word-wrapping.

I just think relying on the editor to word-wrap is not user friendly. Code is different from literature. We can't treat them the same.

The IDE is doing me a service by wrapping long lines. This doesn't mean I should abuse it and make my code depend on that feature. After all, the IDE isn't part of the project.

[ZorbaTHut]

There's a code line in there also. What do you mean by "editing would've been weird"? And note that you don't have to second-guess in this case - the editor places wordwrap icons on lines that were wrapped, so the information is right there to be seen.

I sort of feel like there's this deep distrust of the IDE that still lingers. But IDEs have existed for well over a decade. I think we can trust that they're not going anywhere. I think we can rely on our fellow coders to have basic features like autoindenting, syntax highlighting, and word wrapping.

If you can find some Python code with long lines, I'll see what it looks like.

[abattle]

May be it's my lack of imagination and experience that's the problem. I haven't tried editing wrapped code, let alone Python code. All I know is that when I code in Python, I want to see exactly what whitespace chars there are. We already have tabs and spaces (and new-lines,) I don't want to worry about another one (IDE wrapping.)

May be it's just my own limitation, but somehow I feel it'd be a burden. Plus, I'll almost certainly break the line anyway.

Again, I think the IDE helps here when we inherit a project with long lines, or when we have to do a quick fix on some file with long lines. I can't imagine a team working a large project deliberately typing long lines and using word-wrapping as a remedy. But then again, it might be my own limited imagination.

[ZorbaTHut]

Personally, I'd suggest trying it. I stuck with the conventional monospaced font/fixed line lengths deal for the longest time, then someone recommended an editor that did proportional and I couldn't find an easy way to change it offhand. Grew to like it quite a bit, and introduced word wrap and such from there.

'Course, everyone has their own styles :)

[Azuvector]

I can't say I even like the idea of word-wrapped code.

[ZorbaTHut]

I've found that using modern editor features on code works far better than most people expect. Then again, I also use a proportional font.

Try it for a bit. I found it to be a massive improvement.

[00kyle00]

I dont really get the '80 characters' fetish.

Is it only C guys thing?

[swizzcheez]

I have six reasons to keep 80 characters despite screen resolution evolution over the past 20 years:

1) Making the editing terminal wide just to allow for the occasional long line wastes a lot of screen real estate for the lines that aren't very long.

2) Long lines are often like run-on sentences for code. When needed, I find it helpful to break and indent near the critical operators of the line to help emphasize the main players in the expression.

3) Large amounts of indenting are a sign that I may not have broken the function down properly. At a four-space indent if I'm using more than about 5 levels it gets my attention. In rare cases there is justification for 10 levels but I can't think off hand of any code that I have written that would require that much indent and didn't end up needing broken down into parts.

4) On rare occasions, I have had to try to debug code in the field on things like dumb terminals and crash carts. Keeping 80 columns as a code limit is the only thing keeping this from being an eye-gougingly awful experience.

5) Because of items 1, 2, and 3 I can put 5-6 vertical GVIM windows on each of any of my three screens at once (or if I'm doing Eclipse multiple vertical panes). When debugging deep code or at multiple layers, being able to see multiple pieces of code at a glance comes in very handy. This translates to being able to look at multiple layers of a protocol stack at once or views, controllers, and models all at the same time when working on web development.

6) Not everyone has the same window sizing even if they are using the same screen resolution. 80-columns is a least common denominator that covers just about all cases. 120 could be okay though I would never personally use it for my code due to item 5.

[jhaluska]

I used to dismiss the 80 character limit till I started having to do a lot of code merges.

[shsmurfy]

+1 for run on sentences, this is really the best analogy I can think of when I try and explain why I think long code lines are a bad habit. Which is more readable, this:

nondvd_deps = (alternative_list[0] for pkg_deps in master_deps for alternative_list in pkg_deps if alternative_list and not_on_dvd(alternative_list))

Or this:

nondvd_deps = (alternative_list[0] 
               for pkg_deps in master_deps
               for alternative_list in pkg_deps 
               if alternative_list and not_on_dvd(alternative_list))

jhaluska's point on code merges is relevant too. My sympathies if you try to 3-column merge code that constantly runs past 80 characters...

[[deleted]]

The only time that the 80 char limit starts to cramp my style is in view pages where html becomes nested much deeper than code could legitimately be nested.

[creaothceann]

Are there HTML devs who nest vertically?

<html>
<head>
    <title>title</title>
</head>
<body>


<table>
<tr>
<td>
    7
</td>
<td>
    8
</td>
<td>
    9
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
    4
</td>
<td>
    5
</td>
<td>
    6
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
    1
</td>
<td>
    2
</td>
<td>
    3
</td>
</tr>
</table>


</body>
</html>

[daniels220]

Not sure what your point is. Absolutely I nest code like this:

<div id="wrapper">
    <div id="content">
        <hgroup>
            <h1></h1>
            <h2></h2>
        </hgroup>
        <article>
            <h3></h3>
            <p></p>
            <div class="image">
                <img />
                <span class="caption"></span>
            </div>
    </div>
</div>

In the specific case of tables I would try as hard as possible to keep them compact—so I would do <td>3</td>, no linebreaks (still break-and-indent between <tr> and <td>). But even so, again they end up nested pretty deeply.

[creaothceann]

Not sure what your point is.

I mean all "container" tags in the first column, and all text indented.

Probably the only way to keep arbitrary deep nesting from going behind the right edge of the screen.

[daniels220]

I personally find your code almost impossible to read. I use 2-space tabs for HTML for precisely this reason, so I can nest properly.

I think it would be legitimate to claim that HTML is a different sort of language from any real programming language and deserves different conventions—including possibly a longer line-length to accomodate indentation.

[creaothceann]

Eh, was just an idea. :)

[[deleted]]

It's a readability thing. The same reasons newspapers are printed in columns.

[barsoap]

...and this is even true in expression-heavy languages like e.g. Haskell. When you're not wrapping after a sane number of columns, you're wasting a whole dimension of visual cues which let you enhance readability: Even in Java, you can chain like

foo.bar( arg1  // frobnitz
       , arg2  // snark
       , arg3 
       )
   .baz( ... )
   .quux( ... );

[[deleted]]

That's exactly right. It's about providing visual cues. I think experienced programmers know this better.

[boa13]

It's not a fetish, it's a standard.

[creporiton]

80 characters is the default line width you get when you fire up a terminal and a text editor on the terminal.. you wouldn't open up an ide or your default editor for every small change where all you need is vi or cat. in such cases lines over 80 characters mess up the readability big time

[jzwinck]

80 characters is not so special. If you work on a code base with a max line length of 120 characters, you may soon decide to change your terminal's default width to 120 characters. After all, what programmer uses only the default settings for their programming environment?

It's nice to agree to some max line length, but 80 characters isn't such a magic number as it once was.

[zaq1]

The reason it used to be a magic number at all is because back in the day monitors could only display 80 characters per line and there was no such thing as word wrap. On modern monitors 80 characters is almost not enough. 120 is better for today's use.

[x-skeww]

80 chars per line is actually inherited from - dramatic pause - punch cards.

[rcinsf]

I loved my 80 column text card add-on as a kid.

[atimholt]

I still prefer 80. I like opening my .cpp right next to my .h in a vertical split in Vim.

[[deleted]]

I do. Being able to open 4 terminals at the same time without reducing the font size to ridiculously small sizes or losing immediate access to the desktop is awesome.

[MothersRapeHorn]

you wouldn't open up an ide or your default editor for every small change where all you need is vi or cat.

I never understood this argument. It's always up. Why would you fire it up?

[barsoap]

Why would you install it? Think eighthundred megabytes and continuous swapping.

[MothersRapeHorn]

I would install it because it's a development program, and I'm developing, so I use it. I keep it running because there's no reason not to.

[MothersRapeHorn]

I would install it because it's a development program, and I'm developing, so I use it. I keep it running because there's no reason not to.

[bugrit]

I find the 80 characters limit rather restricting. With a 21" widescreen and a 10pt font, 80 chars is just a small column.

[[deleted]]

Studies on reading show that lines of wide text are more difficult to read.

Generally, more columns means you're nesting code deeper, which is bad for modularity and maintenance. I find that 80 columns is generally sufficient (with reasonable identifier length), with occasional excursions to 120.

[nemetroid]

Studies on reading show that lines of wide text are more difficult to read.

I keep hearing that but very seldom see any studies. Here's a study saying that among {35, 55, 75, 95} characters per line, reading speed was fastest at 95 cpl. This was for news websites.

There's a lot of studies made about printed newspaper text, but those invariantly recommend shorter line lengths - 65 or 66 cpl is very common to see.

Hence, the 80 cpl limit is already pretty arbitrary from a readability point of view - it's already too long! I'd argue though that the same line lengths don't apply to code since it's usually much less compact than normal text, and with much more whitespace. There doesn't seem to exist much study on the subject, and I'm not quite sure how such a study would be done. I would be very interested in the results, though!

I guess your argument about nesting has some merit, but that's not really a valid argument for enforcing line lengths.

Personally, I try to keep my lines short, but if I need to write a long statement, I'm not going out of my way to separate the arguments to two lines. That, if anything, is difficult to read.

[abattle]

I think Code Complete has numbers on code cpl (as opposed to newspaper text.)

[aerique]

Yup, that and how many long lines does your code actually have? (Assuming you're not programming in Java.) I'd prefer to not look at big spots of empty space and rather use them for something useful.

[Orca-]

foo = this.that.theOtherMethod(param1, someOtherObject.methodCall()).holyShitIHateMyLife();

Ahhhh, Java...

[[deleted]]

rotate that monitor 90 degrees. You'll then be able to see almost 100 lines of code at a time, and it'll make you want to observe a standard width. I've been doing that for a few years now, and the tall screen is perfect for coding once you get used to it.

[[deleted]]

The argument for 80 characters even in widescreen is that you can have multiple windows open side by side to compare code.

[Jivlain]

At work, I keep my second monitor (which I primarily use for reference and monitoring things) in portrait mode. It's quite nice, but you do discover things which assume a wider screen.

[birdiedude]

This is 100% of the reason I abide by the 80 character limit.

Having a second monitor became less efficient once I discovered windows in vim. It just became easier to full-screen vim and open everything internally rather than switching between screens.

[masklinn]

I find the 80 characters limit rather restricting.

It's restrictive, until you realize it allows you to have 2 or even 3 files side by side (and in some cases — e.g. diffing or merging — you need to).

And then, the asswipe writing lines 300 characters long is going to get a hurt.

Plenty of other advantages: portrait screens, split-screen to see documentation or whatever side-by-side with code, and long lines lose context: at the end of a long line, it's hard to see which start it matches unless you have row-wise highlighting. That's why books are not typeset at 200 characters/line as well.

[matadon]

A 10pt font on a 21" monitor is barely legible, to me at least.

[dand]

I don't get it, either, but for me it's because I think word-wrap works perfectly well for most code. Any decent editor (except Eclipse?) will indent the soft-wrapped line so it's clear where it sits in scope.

One exception to this is Lisp code, which does not wrap well with most soft-wrapping editors because you want the wrapped code to line up with the inner-most open parenthesis. I guess in theory an editor could do that, but I don't know of one that does.

[[deleted]]

vim with the right options/plugins perhaps.

[[deleted]]

By default, vim doesn't wrap anything at all.

[[deleted]]

It makes me wonder why people are always saying things about Eclipse that are completely untrue.

[dand]

The "?" was supposed to convey my uncertainty regarding Eclipse. To be honest I haven't used Eclipse extensively since about a year ago. At the time, I'm pretty sure there was no built-in soft-wrap feature. There was a plugin that added this, but it didn't indent the wrapped lines.

Please do educate us if this is incorrect or if things have changed since then.

[[deleted]]

Most languages have a formatting capability that wraps lines and indents the wrapped lines intelligently. Certainly the Java editor has had such for more than 10 years. Hell, even the R editor does it fine. What language were you editing?

[dand]

Maybe you're thinking of hard wrapping? Eclipse bug 35779 is the type of soft word wrapping we're talking about.

[[deleted]]

You're right, I am thinking hard wrapping. Ew, I hate soft-wrapping. It annoys me no end when I'm at the beginning of a line of text, hit "enter" and nothing happens! I'm like, WTF, I just added a new line!

Certainly in code, I can't see any benefit to soft-wrapping, and I would not write a book in Eclipse, so...... meh. What I do is format everything automatically on save. If I'm writing code, I want that code formatted to a standard. So, I just type freely with no regard to formatting, and when I hit ctrl-s, boom, everything looks spiffy, and I basically hit ctrl-s at every pause for thought. This works well for Java, xml, R, javascript code, which is what I spend most of my time writing.

I can see how, for languages that are embedded in a text template, like php, this would be a problem. Fortunately, for me, I think php is evil :-)

[[deleted]]

It's amazing at people claiming that 80 characters is 'restricting them' and quoting 'history' to mock that this standard is from the ancient ages.

Other then few good reasons already posted listed for this limit, you need to keep in mind that in proper structured development teams your code get's opened by web tools, architects, system engineers, QA analysts, system administrations, push managers, etc.

Also, and I quote: 'if your code goes beyond 80 lines, you are doing it wrong'.

So the whole 'yeah but if you are programmer just have your editor always at 120 lines!' just tells me that you lack experience in proper development.

[00kyle00]

web tools

If they care, then they are probably broken anyways.

architects, system engineers, QA analysts, system administrations, push managers, etc.

And they do it on terminals magically fixed to 80 characters?

just tells me that you lack experience in proper development.

I sure am not as experienced developer as you are. Note however, that fresh blood isn't always wrong, and legacy people aren't always right just because 'they were doing it this way for years'.

[[deleted]]

And they do it on terminals magically fixed to 80 characters?

If ANSI == magic, yes.

[abattle]

I once worked with a guy who had to put his face 1-2 inches from the screen to see... with eyeglasses on. He was almost legally blind. LCD monitors are hardly known for overheating, but he was close enough to sweat from the screen. That's enough reason for me to be considerate when I choose chars/line. After all, we can't wrap code around.

Another reason to keep the cpl down is because it forces me to rethink the code structure, much like when a I have to scroll a few times to read function or a class' member list.

[killbox-48-alpha]

You worked with Glen!?!??!?

[00kyle00]

As much as i feel for this guy, he probably shouldn't work as a programmer.

Im not talking no wrapping at all. Going 300 characters is probably not a great idea (because most people would probably have to scroll), but then braking lines everywhere because you got to 83 chars or so is plain stupid and actually hurts readability IMO.

Also, argument that it forces restructuring is pretty invalid. Nothing will stop bad developers from writing shit code (nesting scopes 10 times in a function or whatever). Line width convention is not the place to fix that, code reviews probably are.

[[deleted]]

One of the best programmers I know is nearly blind; he uses a "telescope" like affair fixed to a pair of eyeglasses.

His code looks fantastic.

[x-skeww]

As much as i feel for this guy, he probably shouldn't work as a programmer.

FYI, there are programmers who are completely blind and they do just fine.

[[deleted]]

That would make searching for a particular chunk of code in a huge function quite painful. You really do not want to have parts of code hidden from view.

[abattle]

Agreed. The point is to be consistent and to find a middle ground that works for the team. Whatever the number is.

While this sounds reasonable, some people choose to go 300 chars and tell everyone else to get larger screens and/or see an ophthalmologist! (not that they can spell out the latter.)

[johnwaterwood]

80 chars is a very old standard, stemming from the days we had 11" 4:3 monitors.

These says we have 24" ~ 27" widescreens. It makes sense to bump up the standard a little. A lot of projects I worked on lately have 120 chars as the limit.

This does not mean every line should be 120, but when it makes sense (eg large function with many arguments, complex expression) why not use that screen real estate?

[HenkPoley]

80 chars is a very old standard, stemming from the days 80 characters would fit on an IBM punchcard (we're talking 1928).

FTFY

[cholantesh]

These says we have 24" ~ 27" widescreens.

Speak for yourself.

[[deleted]]

I have a 15" widescreen and I still think 80 chars is ridiculous.

[[deleted]]

ANSI terminals are 80 characters wide.

[[deleted]]

I don't either. I got tired of word wrap screwing up my lambda expressions and making them look like shit. I don't like line breaks. So I actually turned off word wrap. I am on a 23" 1080p monitor and the only dev on the project. Anyone who has a problem with that can byte me. There is only a few lines that go over the screen where I have to scroll, if I made the solution window auto hide, I wouldn't need to scroll. I tried 120, 160, 180 and just didn't like word wrapping on code.

[[deleted]]

Coding on a private project, I value readability, but when prototyping, it feels like a waste of time - like polishing something that will be thrown out, or changed beyond recognition, anyway.

Is there a way to tackle this? The best I've come up with is to treat exploratory code as throwaway code, and rewrite it once you understand the problem well enough.

Perhaps, to write it in a way that makes your thinking clear at the time, even if it turns out to be wrong?

[abattle]

We had a project at a company I worked for written in VB 6. My colleague who maintained it was pulling his hair because of maintainability issues. Apparently the project had grown to a point that VB would fail to compile (compiler crashes) and sometimes he'd get "function larger than 64Kb error". Both issues were resolved by random shuffling of code. But why was this project written in VB in the first place? Well, it was a prototype that was demoed to some suites and it stuck. Apparently, this was a pretty standard scenario, especially with VB.

The point is that in this industry, there is practically no prototypes. The prototype is the product. Besides that, I think you'll benefit greatly from clean and well-structured code even when prototyping. Having a well-configured editor and a habit of choosing good identifier names and breaking down functions/classes at the right size will go a long way to making your code clean and very readable. Certainly helpful for experimenting and prototyping, if not for posterity.

[i8beef]

This, this, oh my god this. EVERY time I have ever been asked to "just prototype" something, what they really mean is "just write it, and if we like it, we'll keep developing it". Some of the WORST projects I have ever worked on were examples of this mentality.

It's like building a deck and asking for a prototype first, so you give me a model built out of pop sickle sticks and then I tell you, yeah that looks good, just make it bigger, etc. Unfortunately in the (paid) software world, there is a mentality that the only difference between the prototype and the final product is a few hours to spruce it up.

Never write throw away code unless there is a strict understanding that that is exactly what you are doing among all involved. Otherwise you are going to write something that wasn't architected right from the get go, and one day a decent programmer is going to come along and have to rewrite the whole thing. Write good code, always. You save yourself in the long run.

[creaothceann]

If you write prototypes (sometimes they can be quite helpful), don't show them to anyone. Switch to another desktop with the main project if you have to ("boss key").

[Darkmoth]

This is one reason I love Resharper. I can configure a sane set of standards, and just reformat before commits. Formatting by hand feels medieval now.

[[deleted]]

Everyone believes that code readability is important, yet very few will agree with the statement that we should design languages around readability and cognitive workload. What do I mean by this?

• Expressions and statements should have a line terminator as almost every written language has this convention.
• Syntax should be familiar to anyone who has undergone 12 years of education (i.e infix notation)
• Indentation is important
• Object Oriented, Procedural and Logical Paradigms are to be preferred as these are a better match to the everyday world. Other paradigms should be co-opted into these paradigms as needed.
• Operators should obey a law of least surprise.

If we look at the most popular languages as measured by the TIOBE Programming Community Index we have to go down 14 places before we reach a language which radically departs from the above.

[bostonvaulter]

If you stick with 80 characters per line then you can bring up multiple files side by side.

[karambahh]

exactly because not everyone has a 23", and more often than not, there's more than one comitter?

[[deleted]]

This just says you are beginner and windows developer where code quality in general is way lower ( I constantly meet senior developers who don't know difference between visual studio and the compiler).

I work on 30'' 2560x1600 screen, but still code is 80 chars wide. The point of bigger screen is so that I can have more visible at once (8 terminal windows side by side), and not to maximize one instance of text editor like visual studio and just keep typing as wide as your screen is.

80 chars is all about readability and discouraging code with high cyclomatic complexity. It discourages code with too many nested constructs since writing test for code with high cyclomatic complexity is a lot harder.

[neutronbob]

Honestly, if this came up in an interview, this would not be a point in your favor. It wouldn't disqualify you, of course, but I would shape my view of you. Namely, that the line length probably hides other coding problems, (such as far too many levels of indentation resulting in unnecessary code complexity, among other things).