80 character limit

Pros:

• Forces you to focus on legibility.
  • Emphasis on short.
• Encourages preserving source control blame
• Long lines raises concerns on naming

Cons:

• Some languages may not be suitable for 80 characters.
• Can make some functions or conditions longer
  • When writing conditions, consider breaking them into multiple conditions. See below for reasoning.
• The focus on short may may become bad.
  • Example: Bad variable names.
  • Example: Too many small functions. Makes it difficult to understand flow.
  • Aim for balance.

Considerations:

• Not everyone has the same screen size as you
• Choose the lowest common denominator
  • How many characters can comfortably in the tools you use?
    • GitHub split diff views
      • 13" MacBookPro on "More Space" Resolution (1680x1050) can only comfortably show 104 characters
      • 1280px width can comfortably show 87 characters.
        • General width of my windows when tiled on a desktop monitor
    • See my testing

Exceptions:

• URLs. Always try to use full URLs as much as possible as it helps the reader to intuit the purpose of the URL.

Notes:

• Python recommends 79 characters
• I've tested out character length on different sites
• AirBNB
  • JavaScript: 100 characters
  • Ruby: 100 characters
• Google
  • C++: 80 characters
  • Java: 100 characters
  • JavaScript: 80 characters
  • Python: 80 characters
  • Swift: 100 characters