Hackaday Newsletter 0xE3

How Many Columns are Best Columns? [HACKADAY]( Ask Hackaday: Are 80 Characters Per Line Still Reasonable In 2020? [Read Article Now»]( Seeing Code: The Widescreen Rant By [Elliot Williams]( A couple of weeks ago, Linus Torvalds [laid down the law]( in a particularly Linusesque sort of way. In a software community where tabs vs. spaces can start religious wars, saying that 80-character-wide code was obsolete was, to some, utter heresy. For more background on how we got here, read [Sven Gregori]'s [history piece on Hackaday]( and you'll learn that sliced bread and the 80-character IBM punch card both made their debut in July, 1928. But I digress. When I look at a codebase, I like to see its structure, and I'm not alone. That's one of the reasons for the [Linux Kernel style guide's]( ridiculously wide 8-character tabs. Combined with a trend for variable names becoming more and more descriptive, which I take to be a good thing, and monitors' aspect ratios growing seemingly without end, which I don't, the 80-column width seems like a relic from the long-gone era of the VT-220. In Linus' missive, we learn that he runs terminals at 100 x 50, and frequently drags them out to a screen-filling 142 x 76. (Amateur! I write this to you now on 187 x 48.) When you're running this wide, it doesn't make any sense to line-wrap argument lists, even if you're using Hungarian notation. [Sh ipa / CC BY-SA (]( And yet, change is painful. I've had to re-format code to meet 73-column restrictions for print once only to discover that my inline comments were too verbose. Removing even an artificial restriction like the 80-column limit will have real effects. I write longer paragraphs, for instance, on a wider screen. I see a few good things to come out of this, though. If single thoughts can be expressed on single lines, it makes the shape of the code better reflect its function. Getting rid of pointless wrapping takes up less vertical space, which is at a premium on today's cinematic monitors. And if it makes inline comments better (I know, another holy war!) or facilitates better variable naming, it will have been worth it. But any way you slice it, we're no longer typing on the old [80-character Hazeltine](. It's high time for our coding style and practice to catch up. From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [Lonnie Johnson, Prolific Engineer And Hero To Millions Of Kids (Even If They Don’t Know It)]( By [Jenny List]( He helped build space probes, but you probably know him as the inventor of the Super Soaker. [Read more »]( [Surviving The Pandemic As A Hacker: Take Care Of Your Mental Health]( By [Jenny List]( Cooped up inside, diseases lurking outside. It's literally depressing. Don't let it be. [Read more »]( [Hands On With a Batteryless E-Paper Display]( By [Donald Papp]( Donald gets his hands on an RFID E-paper display, runs it through its paces, and then wonders what to do with it. [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast 072: Robo Golf Clubs, Plastic Speedboats, No-Juice Flipdots, and Super Soakers]( By [Hackaday Editors]( What happened last week on Hackaday? Elliot Williams and special guest Dan Maloney get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [Disable Intel’s Backdoor on Modern Hardware]( [Why You (Probably) Won’t Be Building A Replica Amiga Anytime Soon]( [Arduino Reduces Heating Costs]( [ESP32 Becomes Music Player In Under 40 Lines of Code]( [Mini Computer Brings Starfleet To Your Desk]( [Compile a Hydroponics System From Source]( [Hackaday]( NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [Share]( [Share]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update preferences]( Hackaday.com · 61 S Fair Oaks Ave Ste 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105-2270 · USA