There’s a question on wrapping code at 80 columns in the Joel on Software Forum. Most of the time, when I see 80 columns as a standard it’s to enable easy printing of the code. However, in this day and age, why are you printing code? I print code occasionally when I need to read it in-depth, but other than that I do most of my reading on-screen. It’s certainly not a regular occurrence.
I also use mostly large or widescreen displays for coding. The smallest display I use regularly is my laptop, which is 1152 by 768. Most of the time I use my 19-inch monitor, which I run at 1600 by 1200. As a result, if I want to write really long lines, I can. But I don’t.
I generally limit the length of lines I write to 80 to 120 characters. Most of the time this is easy, because Objective-C’s syntax lends itself to very readable multi-line expressions:
NSDictionary *d = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:@"Chris"
forKey:@"name"];
The main reason I do it, though, is that I use multiple windows while I code. I usually have at least 6 windows open in Xcode while I’m coding: The Xcode project itself, the source and header file for the class I’m working on, the source and header file for the unit test I’m working on, and the build results window (which also shows my unit test results). Often it’s much more, with more class and unit test sources & headers open. And it’s much easier to fit these windows all on a screen when they don’t need to be as wide as the screen to see their contents…