The "79 characters per line" part is nonsense. Their very own example shows how unreadable code becomes when doing this:
class Rectangle(Blob):
def __init__(self, width, height,
color='black', emphasis=None, highlight=0):
if width == 0 and height == 0 and \
color == 'red' and emphasis == 'strong' or \
highlight > 100:
raise ValueError("sorry, you lose")
if width == 0 and height == 0 and (color == 'red' or
emphasis is None):
raise ValueError("I don't think so -- values are %s, %s" %
(width, height))
Blob.__init__(self, width, height,
color, emphasis, highlight)
It's like try-
ing to read
a news arti-
cle written
like this.
80-column terminals havn't been a serious development environment for over a decade. When I do need to edit from a crippled 80x25 environment in a pinch, editor wrapping is a minor inconvenience; I'm not going to maim my code during normal development just to avoid that.
120 column wrapping is perfectly sensible for modern development, and I have no problem with 140. This guideline is obsolete and following it results in ugly, hard-to-read code.
