Pep8 for long pattern

[Dan Stromberg]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 4:37 PM, Rick Johnson
<rantingrickjohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 27, 2018 at 4:02:37 PM UTC-5, Dan Stromberg wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 8:18 AM, Michael Torrie <torriem at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > But when it's exactly what you need, why do you need to
>> > shoehorn the expression into 79 characters?  Seems
>> > pointless in a case like this. PEP8 is a guideline, not an
>> > absolute rule.  It's okay to bend it a bit in cases like
>> > this.
>>
>> I think PEP8 specifying a max of 80 columns is very silly.
>> Even an old VT220 terminal could do 132 columns.
>
> And just think how many columns you could do with 1pt font!
> And while i admit i enjoy coding with my nose pressed
> against the monitor as much as the next "guyal"[1], just uh,
> be sure to keep a good optometrist on retainer, eh pal?

I realize you're just trying to be a pest, but some folks will take
your words seriously.

I can easily get 132+ columns of a font large enough for my 52 year
old eyes on a 15" laptop.

>> My understanding is that PEP8 requires 80 columns because a
>> tiny, tiny, tiny minority of Python developers wanted to be
>> able to put 3 editors next to each other horizontally,
>> without wrapping.
>
> Stacking horizontal windows three deep is all the rage, but
> the reason has more to do with easy reading. Long lines are
> difficult to read. And when your eyes do a linefeed at the
> end of a 200 character long line, there's no guarantee
> you'll end up starting on the next line. Sometimes you'll
> find yourself three lines down, while others, back at the
> start of the same line. And that's annoying.

Again, you're just trying to be a pest, but no one is asking for
10,000,000 columns.  120 or 132 would be good.

80 is actually a bit defeatist, because it discourages developers from
using more descriptive identifiers.