Line lengths, or the Pro Puppy Punting League is now open

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Style Pass

2023-01-23 06:30:06

Yesterday's post about excessively long lines of code has generated some reader feedback. To be honest, it's rather depressing. One comment is from someone who used to be in the video game industry who says that places where full-screen IDEs are the norm (and the expectation) will "... almost entirely ignore line length restrictions". I take that to mean they are completely disconnected from however the actual file looks and are effectively bound to their IDEs forever. Trying to go from that to a traditional environment would be impossible.

Another comment informs me that some people do this even with ordinary editors. In particular, this reader sets vim to wraparound and just lets it do whatever it wants. This leads to lines which push past 200 (!) characters, and even more when tabs are expanded.

To me, this sort of thing is just way out there. It's like finding out that people have organized a professional league of puppy kickers and there are teams in every major city. They just go out and do awful things and have a whole structure built up around it. There are fans, television coverage, and even a fantasy league during the off season.