On 09.09.2011 17:49, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/k7pwu/eclipse_default_line_length_of_80_chars_outdated/
Andrei
Interesting to me was the quote from Linus, saying that indentation
depth should never exceed 3. If you accept that, then 80 characters
seems perfectly reasonable.
Pretty clearly, the language design has a big influence on the maximum
indent level of a typical program. I would say that unless the language
has considered a low level of indenting to be desirable, 80 characters
isn't enough. For example, in D, a member function of a class inside a
template wrapped in a version statement already uses three levels of
indentation.
IMHO, the comparisons with newspaper columns are flawed, because
newspapers don't use indentation in the same way that code does.
It seems to be a trade-off: more indentation improves readability, but
it also increases line length, which reduces readability...
