> The problem with overly wide lines is that it hurts readability because it's harder to find the next line when scanning your eyes from right back to left.
There is some truth to this, but it's largely irrelevant. When text is laid out for books, it's based on a fixed width and each sentence follows the next. Code isn't laid out that way, with code, each statement starts on a new line which naturally limits line width.
Good programmers gravitate towards shorter lines of code by nature. If your average line of code is wider than 80 characters, it's likely you have some other, bigger coding style problems which need to be addressed.
But having the option to use longer lines when it makes the code more readable is also valuable. Putting a fairly short, arbitrary limits on line length just makes other parts of coding less pleasant, variable names in particular suffer quickly when you can't make comparisons on a single line.
Where I work, we wrap lines at 120 characters but the overwhelming majority of the code is less than 80 characters wide. Longer lines are reserved for if statements with multiple conditions or ternary assignments.
There is some truth to this, but it's largely irrelevant. When text is laid out for books, it's based on a fixed width and each sentence follows the next. Code isn't laid out that way, with code, each statement starts on a new line which naturally limits line width.
Good programmers gravitate towards shorter lines of code by nature. If your average line of code is wider than 80 characters, it's likely you have some other, bigger coding style problems which need to be addressed.
But having the option to use longer lines when it makes the code more readable is also valuable. Putting a fairly short, arbitrary limits on line length just makes other parts of coding less pleasant, variable names in particular suffer quickly when you can't make comparisons on a single line.
Where I work, we wrap lines at 120 characters but the overwhelming majority of the code is less than 80 characters wide. Longer lines are reserved for if statements with multiple conditions or ternary assignments.