This. The problem itself has nothing to do with the number of characters you have on a line - the problem is that the vast majority of programming tools today conflate content and presentation.
The job of making sure the line length is reasonable is not up to the writer of the code - it is up to the tools that are used to read it. Lines should be as long as necessary, and then intelligently (i.e. syntactically-aware) soft line-wrapped by the editor when opened.
> the problem is that the vast majority of programming tools today conflate content and presentation.
This is not a problem, but a beautiful and crucial property of text files. I like the principle that "a program is a text file", that you can edit with tools orthogonal to the language in question
> I like the principle that "a program is a text file", that you can edit with tools orthogonal to the language in question
Adjustable tab display width and automatic line wrapping are features any good text editor offers that do not interfere with the use of any other text manipulation tools on that file.
Now, if you're forced to work in an environment where someone wrongheadedly decided to adapt to users who have bad or badly configured editors and standardized on space indentation that sucks, but that's the fault of whoever made that bad decision.
I try to keep my Clojure code under 80 characters (so that I can have three editors comfortably side by side at my preferred font size) and keeping lines short is more than just where to wrap or other visual-only things. Usually when I have a long line, it makes me reconsider the structure of the code and I refactor it into something else. Most of the time, the new structure not only has shorter lines, but is simpler too, so its a double win. This isn’t always a task that the tools could do for mem, though, as it sometimes rewuires rethinking what I’m trying to accomplish.
The job of making sure the line length is reasonable is not up to the writer of the code - it is up to the tools that are used to read it. Lines should be as long as necessary, and then intelligently (i.e. syntactically-aware) soft line-wrapped by the editor when opened.