The Linux Kernel Deprecates The 80 Character Line Coding Style

[duby229]

I'm running at exactly the intersection of what I prefer and what is viable. There's no room to go physically wider and, if you mean upping the DPI, I respectfully decline. I don't want to pay in money and heat output to drive more pixels if that doesn't bring a corresponding increase in how many applications I can fit on my desktop at once.

If I ever buy a 4K monitor, it's going to be a 54" large format display so I can keep my current DPI and width but gain the equivalent of a second row of monitors above this one.

OT: Just my own opinion here. From my experience sitting in front of one big ass screen is terribly uncomfortable. If you really want the equivalent of multiple monitors it's way more comfortable to actually get multiple monitors.

[kcmichaelm]

I'm running at exactly the intersection of what I prefer and what is viable. There's no room to go physically wider and, if you mean upping the DPI, I respectfully decline. I don't want to pay in money and heat output to drive more pixels if that doesn't bring a corresponding increase in how many applications I can fit on my desktop at once.

If I ever buy a 4K monitor, it's going to be a 54" large format display so I can keep my current DPI and width but gain the equivalent of a second row of monitors above this one.

It was a troll response anyway, or at least a response by a troll.

It's clearly within the free and open ideals of Linux development to gatekeep comfortable development to those only on resolutions above 1080p.

[danger]

Seems like 120 ot so might have been a better extension.

When I started a new project a year ago, I made a rule for the maximum line width to be 120 characters. And a year later I can say, it worked out great. It didn't feel like there is an artificial limit, and at the same time when a line exceeded 120 characters, usually it meant that the code was too messy and needed a rewrite.

[arquolo]

He's changing whong limit.
It's better to change indentation to 4-character instead of current 8-character. Then line width of 80 character will be enough.

[Raka555]

Conversely, you could posit the ability to write has spread to the masses, not something that was true of the 1400-1500's. Reading and writing in that age was left up to the educated, i.e. nobler, wealthier classes. As the availability of the printed book became cheaper, the ability to publish became cheaper and could thus be afforded by those with less prestige. This has continued to today, when the majority of the population is able to publish for effectively nothing.

This is my guess as well.

[phoron]

Partially offtopic WOT rant, sorry ...

Conversely, you could posit the ability to write has spread to the
masses, not something that was true of the 1400-1500's. Reading and
writing in that age was left up to the educated, i.e. nobler,
wealthier classes. As the availability of the printed book became
cheaper, the ability to publish became cheaper and could thus be
afforded by those with less prestige. This has continued to today,
when the majority of the population is able to publish for effectively
nothing.

I agree. We now see what ordinary people write, not just specialist
writers like before. You even find that language professionals like
journalists can't write correctly. Culturally, people are bombarding
each other with irrelevant stuff (in social networks or so) that
before wouldn't have been committed to writing, or at least wouldn't
be accessible to everyone, just closer acquaintances. It is not worth
any second thought on how to properly convey meaning, for such a
disposable text, and here it is reasonable to use shorter sentences (I
guess it is only globally published because, alas, it is also not
worth a second thought on intended audience). I don't know whether the
graph was compiled from literary texts or just a mix of all text that
an average person reads, but the fact that many people are reading
such irrelevant messages in such volume, probably leads to less
tolerance for richer text even in literary or professional context.

It is doubtful whether one can call alphabetization the current
reading and writing skills of most people. Nobody reads mails anymore,
or worse, they answer them without any understanding and forget them
immediately. The other day I was shown a mail a friend had sent to
someone higher in her workplace, asking for what amounted to a trust
chain to replace a sensitive exchange with someone in an
organizationally remote department, that was made in person before
COVID-19. She had written a very clear text explaining the task, its
importance, and why it couldn't be made any more as before, and the
need for a secure means of exchange. She is not into computers or
security but wrote a very clear and reasonable text, one page long and
very easy to read. She was frustrated that the only answer she got was
a request to summarize it in three lines.

I think people is simply becoming sillier (mostly because of
information overload and relying too much on computers and remote
systems "thinking" for them). So they retain only simpler vocabulary
and draw more primitive arguments with their simpler concepts. They
don't take the time to parse or compose complex text, lose or don't
acquire the ability for lack of practice, and finally take it for
unnecessary. This is useful for some situations but it makes it hard
to solve other problems.

There is also the globalization problem. People no longer write much
in their native languages, they use English or some foreign language
that they don't know well enough (I'm doing it right now, sorry,
corrections welcome). I often read texts in English that I'd prefer to
read in the native language of the writer, even if I don't understand
it or only a little. If at least the writer had the skills to leave
their thoughts written I can always look for ways to read them or have
them translated, but when the meaning didn't even reach the writing
then it's lost. Like with the information overload, you get more
quantity of exchanges (one can communicate with more people in
English), but lower quality.

And the problem that scares me is that we do not seem to find a way to
spread the quantity of communication without lowering the maximum
quality. It's possibly good to have lower quality communications
between people that wouldn't otherwise communicate. But not If in he
process we lose the ability to maintain the higher complexity
communications, because there are things that simpler text just
doesn't cut.

I find 80 characters a little short (depends a lot on the average
length of identifiers), but I don't seem to understand why the change
should be made now. I don't imagine the code complexity in the kernel
has changed in a way that makes it now harder to read in 80 columns
than before. The monitors may have changed (not just now, longer ago),
but people were comfortable having files side to side before, why no
longer ? Anyway, i don't care, we have more pressing problems that
code line length.

Btw, what about phoronix ? Do you prefer fixed width lines like these
or one line per paragraph ?

[Delgarde]

Why is there a limit after all? If there are really some ugly long lines of code the reviewers can easily reject the patch and ask for code improvements.

Fundamentally, it's because it's bad manners to waste the time of human reviewers with trivial formatting issues... that kind of analysis is something that can easily be automated, and so developers are expected to have run the relevant tools and fixed up the formatting before submitting patches.

[TemplarGR]

Get yourself better monitors.

LOL. 1080p resolution is fine for a desktop PC and will be fine for the foreseeable future. Sure, 4K would be ideal, but right now quality 4K monitors are expensive and they aren't really worth the price premium on the desktop. I find that my ideal size for my desktop is around 24in, 27 is the absolute maximum i would tolerate on my desk but i think at 27 and beyond the screen is really large to stand close to it on a desk. Larger screens have the severe problem of having to actually move your eyes a lot more to focus while reading, and this is tiring for your eyes after long periods. It is better if you can focus the whole screen in your field of view without moving your eyes much if at all, that way it is more relaxed and tireless. To do this for larger screens you need to stand further away, and at some point you will be just programming from your couch so you might as well get remote keyboard/mouse and plug your pc to your 60in OLED TV....

At those smaller sizes, 4K isn't really making a huge difference. It IS better, obviously, but it is not as noticeable as it is on large TV screens. Unless you are doing graphical design or you really love 4K AAA gaming, you can wait for 4K monitors to become mainstream.

[kaprikawn]

I'm running at exactly the intersection of what I prefer and what is viable. There's no room to go physically wider and, if you mean upping the DPI, I respectfully decline. I don't want to pay in money and heat output to drive more pixels if that doesn't bring a corresponding increase in how many applications I can fit on my desktop at once.

If I ever buy a 4K monitor, it's going to be a 54" large format display so I can keep my current DPI and width but gain the equivalent of a second row of monitors above this one.

This is exactly the sort of attitude Linus is railing against, I have some weird, arcane setup, and everyone needs to adapt to it.

Obligatory XKCD

[Zeioth]

I thought 80 col has the best readability. 100 is fine too, I just hope they don't go much further than that.