Studies on optimal code width?

Question

If you enable the \"View Right Margin\" in your IDE of choice, it is likely that it will default to 80 characters. I tend to change it to 120 for no reason other than it was th

Answer 1

The right margin option is intended to show you the width of the page if you're going to print the code, and has previous posted said it was set to 80 because that's what the line length historically was before GUI all the way back to punch cards.

I've seen a recommendation on some blog recently (can't remember what blog) to increase you IDE font size in order to improve code quality, the logic behind it is that if less code fits on screen you'll write shorter lines and shouter functions.

In my opinion shorter lines make reading the code and debugging it easier, so I try to keep the lines short, if you have to set a limit to make yourself write better code then choose what works for you - also if you are more productive with longer lines feel free to increase the page size and code only on a wide screens.