When I'm grinding out Cobol or Algol code (yes, I am a dinosaur), I stick with 80 columns per line. Because, for better or worse, that's all my compiler sees. One compiler squawks when a line extends beyond Col 80, another allows the use of Col 81-90 for a markid, but the standard editor doesn't grant access to those columns easily, so it's infrequently used. But if I'm using a more freely-formatted language, you can bet I'm ignoring the 80-column limit. But I'm still keeping my lines as short as possible, and even wrapping in some cases, because my code needs to be easy to read, and side-scrolling is the antithesis of reading easiness.
Also, when I was coding in PascalVS at the University of Pangaea, I distinctly recall becoming incensed one day over the fact that, while the Hollerith card provided 80 columns, the PascalVS compiler stopped reading earlier than that--maybe it only accepted 72 characters per line. That was irritating. And costly--we had to provide our own cards, and on a student budget, they weren't cheap!
FORTRAN is well known to have a 72 column limit. The reason is that the IBM 704 had a 36-bit word, and the card reader supplied only two words per row.
Comments
When I'm grinding out Cobol or Algol code (yes, I am a dinosaur), I stick with 80 columns per line. Because, for better or worse, that's all my compiler sees. One compiler squawks when a line extends beyond Col 80, another allows the use of Col 81-90 for a markid, but the standard editor doesn't grant access to those columns easily, so it's infrequently used. But if I'm using a more freely-formatted language, you can bet I'm ignoring the 80-column limit. But I'm still keeping my lines as short as possible, and even wrapping in some cases, because my code needs to be easy to read, and side-scrolling is the antithesis of reading easiness.
Also, when I was coding in PascalVS at the University of Pangaea, I distinctly recall becoming incensed one day over the fact that, while the Hollerith card provided 80 columns, the PascalVS compiler stopped reading earlier than that--maybe it only accepted 72 characters per line. That was irritating. And costly--we had to provide our own cards, and on a student budget, they weren't cheap!
FORTRAN is well known to have a 72 column limit. The reason is that the IBM 704 had a 36-bit word, and the card reader supplied only two words per row.