Software development topics I've changed my mind on

> Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet the rest where they are

> (…)

> People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important things.

What you call “stressing over minutiae” others might call “caring for the craft”. Revered artisans are precisely the ones who care for the details. “Stressing” is your value judgement, not necessarily the ground truth.

What you’re essentially saying is “cherish the people who care up to the level I personally and subjectively think is right, and dismiss everyone who cares more as insane weirdos who cannot prioritise”.

Not really. Obsessing over breaking lines after famous 80 chars in Eclipse was, is and will be idiotic to be polite. Surprisingly large amount of people were obsessed by this long after we got much bigger screens, if that was ever an argument (it wasn't for me). 2 spaces vs 4 spaces or tab. Cases like these were not that rare, even though now it seems better. That's not productive focus of one's (or team's) energy and a proper waste of money for employer/customer, it brings 0 added value to products apart form polishing ego of specific individual.

Folks who care about the craft obsess (well within realm of being realistic) more about architecture, good use of design patterns, using good modern toolset (but not bleeding edge), not building monolithic spaghetti monster that can't evolve much further, avoiding quick hacks that end up being hard to remove and work with over time and so on.

If you don't see a difference between those groups, I don't think you understood author's points.

I'd say avoiding long lines is one of the most important rules. I regularly have 2-3 files open side by side, I don't want to have to scroll sideways to read the code.

80 characters is a bit on the low end imo but I'd rather have the code be too vertical than too horizontal. Maybe 120-150 is a more reasonable limit. It's not difficult to stay within those bounds as long as you don't do deep nesting which I don't really want to see anyway because it's hardly ever necessary and it makes code more difficult to read.

Functional code is more chained and need more space often. Descriptive names are better; tends to be longer. Buy ultrawide.

80 is for aholes who like to use small laptop and then force it on everyone else. 120/150 is reasonable.

200 is great.

Yep.

And the laptop excuse is not even valid, I used a 11" MacBook Air for 10 years and even back then 80 always felt extremely limiting for me.

I just tested and: even when zooming +1 on VSCode and leaving the minimap open I can fit 140 chars without any horizontal scroll.

People demanding 80 columns always have some crazy setups, like an IDE where the editor is just a minuscule square in the centre, like an Osbourne 1 computer.

And 140 chars aren't enough for two files side by side with 80 chars. With a readable font size and a narrow font about 90 chars is a good limit on a 14" laptop screen. Coincidentally that same limit then allows for three files side by side on the average desktop screen - or a browser window at the side for reference.

If you can live with a single file on screen that's great, but the utility of two is far greater than having a chunk of the screen empty most of the time because of a few long lines.