JMRyan wrote:
Walter Bright <newshou...@digitalmars.com> wrote in
news:ii4an2$1npj$1...@digitalmars.com:
80 columns came from how many characters would fit on a standard size
8.5*11 sheet of paper. Even punch cards followed this precedent.
This suggests (without exactly stating) one of my personal reasons for a
strict line length limit: sometimes programmers like to print their
code. Maybe I'm showing my age, but I find dead trees best for code
review. One *can* use a smaller font (hard on the eyes) or print in
landscape (yuck--and even that is not enough for some code).
PS. I knew about the punch card precident and have even used key punch
machines myself, but I didn't know that punch card length was based on
earlier precident. Given the absurd length of line printer output of
the day, that surprises me.
Looking it up shows that the history is a bit more complicated than I said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollerith_card
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_per_line
