[Ingeration] 80's The Limit

[StatusReport]

I'm currently "studying" the course "Introduction to computer science" at the university.

Why "studying"? Because I have to, and because I don't really go to lectures because they are boring as hell and useless.

Anyhow, the course has its own coding conventions and style. Most of the conventions are totally fine and agreeable, but there's one that's driving me crazy - "Thou shall not write lines that include more than 80 characters.".

The reason is not specified (as usual here - why specify why to do something when you can just tell the students to do A and B), but I may assume it concerns the 1980's DOS/Amiga/Mainframes 80 chars limit, when working in textual video mode.

So let's count how many graphical operating systems that can display and print lines longer than 80 chars in one line got released by Microsoft(TM) 'till now:

1. Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) 3.1
2. Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) NT 4
3. Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) 95
4. Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) 98
5. Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) ME
6. Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) 2000
7. Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) XP
8. Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) 2003
9. Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) Vista

And they still haven't found the "Change font size" button... too sad.

Limiting line length is good, but why limit it to the ridiculous number of 80? When programming in an object oriented language, creating a line which calls a class method and specifying 2-3 parameters will exceed this limit. So to avoid losing points an evil linefeed needs to be inserted.

The huge problem here, as I see it, is that most of the people studying with me haven't programmed in a real programming language (not Pascal) and doesn't know how a real-life code should look like. This is one of some bad habits they learn in a place that should theoretically teach them everything they should know about programming.

So what's the moral here? Read Code Complete and forget about people who know nothing about programming.

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Posted By StatusReport to Ingeration at 2/25/2008 09:43:00 PM