On 10/29/2012 10:28 AM, Alexander Solla wrote: > > In any language, a line longer than 80 characters usually (but not > always) suggests that you might want to stop and rethink your design. In > many cases a refactoring or two will greatly simplify the code and > reduce your line length as a result. > > > I disagree. That might be true for imperative languages, where width is > indicative of deep nesting and its associated problems. But it is not > true for a functional language, where it is merely indicative of a wide > "normal form". Yes, the normal form can sometimes be refactored, but to > what end? You might easily end up refactoring out of the level of > abstraction you actually want. Or the wide form might have useful > properties, like the ability to sort the lines of source code > alphanumerically (which would be lost if you switched to a stanza-based > format)
Well, I did leave the door open for special cases with "usually (but not always)." I know I've had to go over 80 chars before with huge constants or long test names. If you're willing to sacrifice maintain/readability for some other property (e.g. source code sortability), then I don't think my point applies. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
