10 Nov
2017
10 Nov
'17
11:46 p.m.
On 2017-11-10 3:43 PM, Jon Steinhart wrote:
Toby Thain writes:
It's _reading_. Code doesn't magically escape typographic factors. The
human visual/processing system is the constraint, it does not care
whether you're reading paper or the more hostile LCD - and it has not
changed materially in the millennia we've been doing writing (and
certainly not the 500 years we've been doing books). There is also a
body of modern research on this. Even research specifically focused on
code, I believe.
Just don't move on without some limit. There
are real
cognitive/typographic reasons why excessively long lines hurt
comprehension. This is why both 500 year old books and 5 month old books
have narrow measures.
80 might be too narrow for most, but at some point beyond 132 is "too
far". :)
Well, I would claim that books have technological limitations that are
different than computer monitors. It's a matter of doing what's appropriate
instead of taking a dogmatic approach.
I will point out that while it's sometimes a pain, the reader/writer ratio
is a major driving force. I save on typing and use very terse code when
writing stuff for myself. But, when writing stuff where there are many
readers I feel that it's my job to put in the extra work to make it more
accessible to the reader, partly because I don't want the readers bugging me.
Jon