> I'm a beginner dev and I find it very odd both that vscode tries to limit my commit messages to 50 or 55 characters, and also that python linters want to make my lines of code so small. What's the reason behind this? Old small monitors of the past?
On my laptop with a 13.3" 1080p display I can fit two side-by-side terminals at 87 characters wide (two of these are used up by vim to display git symbols and linter markers, I don't use a number line).
This is not because I can't afford a laptop with a bigger screen, but rather that I value portability, lightness and thinness over screen size. That being said, on larger desktop monitors I also value easy readability meaning that the font size is usually so large that I don't get much more than 90 characters per column.
This means I can have a man-page or other form of documentation as well as an interpreter window on the right side of my screen (in two stacked windows) and the code on the left side of my screen.
I really don't even quite understand how people handle the defaults of VSCode with its enormous directory tree column and the minimap. about 40% of horizontal screen space is wasted in the default VSCode configuration. I mean, to some extent, multi-monitor setups help solve this, but again, I value portability and while I do have a multi-monitor setup, I don't want to be reliant on it to be able to comfortably get work done.
So, at least for me, there's an enormous amount of value in keeping things to 80 characters in width. This doesn't mean I never go over that limit, it just means that most of my code is comfortably readable both when using a small laptop and when using a larger desktop setup.
The other main reason is making it easier to read. It's not that helpful or easy to keep track of a line which is 120 characters long. Not least of all because in my setup it would either end up off-screen or badly hard-wrapped. There's a reason newspapers still use columns and it's so it's easier to keep track of where you are in a paragraph. Now in code, it's not usually 10 120 character lines one after another, but usually it's still harder to make sense of what you're looking at when it's one really long line.
On my laptop with a 13.3" 1080p display I can fit two side-by-side terminals at 87 characters wide (two of these are used up by vim to display git symbols and linter markers, I don't use a number line).
This is not because I can't afford a laptop with a bigger screen, but rather that I value portability, lightness and thinness over screen size. That being said, on larger desktop monitors I also value easy readability meaning that the font size is usually so large that I don't get much more than 90 characters per column.
This means I can have a man-page or other form of documentation as well as an interpreter window on the right side of my screen (in two stacked windows) and the code on the left side of my screen.
I really don't even quite understand how people handle the defaults of VSCode with its enormous directory tree column and the minimap. about 40% of horizontal screen space is wasted in the default VSCode configuration. I mean, to some extent, multi-monitor setups help solve this, but again, I value portability and while I do have a multi-monitor setup, I don't want to be reliant on it to be able to comfortably get work done.
So, at least for me, there's an enormous amount of value in keeping things to 80 characters in width. This doesn't mean I never go over that limit, it just means that most of my code is comfortably readable both when using a small laptop and when using a larger desktop setup.
The other main reason is making it easier to read. It's not that helpful or easy to keep track of a line which is 120 characters long. Not least of all because in my setup it would either end up off-screen or badly hard-wrapped. There's a reason newspapers still use columns and it's so it's easier to keep track of where you are in a paragraph. Now in code, it's not usually 10 120 character lines one after another, but usually it's still harder to make sense of what you're looking at when it's one really long line.