[phobos] Column limits again

[Jonathan M Davis]

> 80 characters.  Not a phobos contributor, but I've been coding for 20 years
> in various languages.  Long lines are hard to read - almost invariable
> nasty compound expressions (which should be factored for readability) or
> extremely long identifier names (nothing wrong with this, but ids should
> be as long as necessary and no longer.  There is no benefit to putting so
> much stuff onto a single line.
> 
> If you don't like coding style rules, tough - welcome to the real world.
>  Until we write an IDE that operates on ASTs and formats code on an
> individual basis, we will continue to have to do these things.
> 
> P.S. As a general rule, maintain the formatting style of the file in which
> you are making edits (spacing, bracing, etc.)

I confess that I've never understood why anyone would think that 80 characters 
was enough. And almost everyone that I've ever discussed it with prior to it 
coming up on the newsgroups here has thought that an 80 character limit was 
outdated and constraining, so to find folks here thinking that 80 characters 
is a good limit is very odd. It's just too short.

The main problem is indenting. If no code were indented, then 80 characters 
wouldn't be so bad. But when you indent much at all (especially with 4 
characters per level of indentation), 80 characters very quickly becomes too 
short. And if you have appropriately descriptive symbol names, then you're 
doubly screwed.

So, while a character limit may make sense, I don't understand how anyone 
could be happy with only 80 characters. Sure, there are plenty of lines of 
code that will fit within 80 characters, but it doesn't take much at all 
before they don't - particularly with 4 characters per level of indentation 
and properly descriptive variable names. 80 is just too restrictive. 80 
characters after the indentation wouldn't generally be a problem, but when it 
includes the indentation, it's definitely a problem.

- Jonathan M Davis