Studies on optimal code width?

Question

If you enable the \"View Right Margin\" in your IDE of choice, it is likely that it will default to 80 characters. I tend to change it to 120 for no reason other than it was th

Answer 1

Have mercy on the programmers who have to maintain your software later and stick to a limit of 80 characters.

Reasons to prefer 80:

• Readable with a larger font on laptops

• Leaves space for putting two versions side by side for comparison

• Leaves space for navigation views in the IDE

• Prints without arbitrarily breaking lines (also applies to email, web pages, ...)

• Limits the complexity in one line

• Limits indentation which in turn limits complexity of methods / functions

Yes, it should be part of the coding standard.