LLVM Coding Standards – Source Code Width:
Write your code to fit within 80 columns of text. This helps those of us who like to print out code and look at your code in an
xtermwithout resizing it.
The longer answer is that there must be some limit to the width of the code in order to reasonably allow developers to have multiple files side-by-side in windows on a modest display. If you are going to pick a width limit, it is somewhat arbitrary but you might as well pick something standard. Going with 90 columns (for example) instead of 80 columns wouldn’t add any significant value and would be detrimental to printing out code. Also many other projects have standardized on 80 columns, so some people have already configured their editors for it (vs something else, like 90 columns).
This is one of many contentious issues in coding standards, but it is not up for debate.
Is there any more stupid rule than to wrap around source code lines just because someone would possibly look at code in an xterm?
So source is consuming less than 25% width of a quote ordinary monitor wasting all this space on the right. Same time, the source code lines are objectively long and are massively wrapped around.
Wrapping destroys readability of code.
Re-wrapping source code has an obvious negative effect on change tracking.
I, for once, want to see as much of source code as possible momentarily because it helps to have a picture of what is going on. Information at the end of lines is less important so it is not a big deal even if it goes beyond the right visible margin, but it’s important to have as many LINES of code as possible – I would even prefer to skip blank lines and utilize IDE’s capabilities to collapse comments, functions, regions and scopes. For this reason some developers even rotate monitors into portrait mode – to see more of source code at a time.
Fitting 80 columns and having it even not up for debate is a clearly genius move to keep devs productive. Through continuous irritation.