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Certainly getting out of the scope of the orignal discussion here, but you would think people should be able to have their code layout and style to their own preference suited for their device. There are problems with that to overcome certainly, for e.g. referring to line numbers, but they seem fairly solveable.

But commenters here suggesting the 80 char limit, inherited from IBM punchcards and typewriters before that, for diplaying code on smart phones half a century later is a little hilarious to me.




80 characters is a widely-agreed-upon standard, and standards with lots of buy-in are useful for a variety of reasons, regardless of origin.

Units of precisely 20 feet is also a standard, used mostly in countries that use SI. It doesn't diminish the value or utility of containerization.


Yes standards useful and workplaces can easily enforce their own internal ones for things like line length limits. But they are useless if they do not work for everyone who they apply to and especially not if they don't adapt to world around them. Cubit used to be a standard, too! But then we developed better ways to measure things than our inconsistently sized forearms.




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