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What are your programming hot takes?
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Programming
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Self documenting code is infinitely more valuable than comments because then code spreads with it's use, whereas the comments stay behind.
I got roasted at my company when I first joined because my naming conventions are a little extra. That lasted for about 2 months before people started to see the difference in legibility as the code started to change.
One of the things I tell my juniors is, "this isn't the 80s. There isn't an 80 character line limit. The computer doesn't benefit from your short variable names. I should be able to read most lines of code as a single non-compound sentence in English with only minor tweaks and the English sentence should be what is happening in most of those lines of code."
80 character limit is helpful though when you need to have many files open at a time. Maybe 100 is more reasonable. Fighting indentation is important too.
I, too, remember the days before ultra high definition ultra wide monitors.
I thought this argument was bogus in the 90s on a 21" CRT and the argument has gotten even less valid since then. There are so many solutions to these problems that increase productivity for paltry sums of money it's insane to me that companies don't immediately purchase these for all developers.
I have a massive ultrawide and I still 100% believe in line limits. Long lines are harder to read in general but even with a limit of 100 I frequently have 3 files opened next to each other and I can't read entire lines easily. Line limits just aren't about the size of the monitor and I can't believe people still say that.
I understand the concern, but readability and comprehension are way more important than line length. If the length impairs readability, it's too long. Explicitly limits are terrible. Guidelines, fine.
Ultimately, you do you. I still think your crazy and I think your argument is poor.
Yes a strict 80 character limit would be bad but that's why modern formatters aren't strict and default to 90-100.
I've pretty much never seen code that would have been more readable had the lines been longer than that.
My main argument is still that shorter lines are more readable. I just think it's a bullshit argument to say that long lines are fine because large monitors exists. I don't see how that makes me crazy.
See, I think length limits and readability are sometimes at odds. To say that you 100% believe in length limits means that you would prefer the length limit over a readable line of code in those situations.
I agree that shorter lines are often more readable. I also think artificial limits on length are crazy. Guidelines, fine. Verbosity for the sake of verbosity isn't valuable... But to say never is a huge stretch. There are always those weird edge cases that everyone hates.