Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated

[Rustom Mody]

On Sunday, April 17, 2016 at 9:19:48 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Rustom Mody wrote:
> > Thats a strange self-contradiction.  I wrote this:
> >  http://blog.languager.org/2012/10/layout-imperative-in-functional.html
> > to make the case against PEP8 style line length strictures.
> > Which has the SAME code formatted in two styles:
> >
> > --  < 80 cols, 48 lines
> > --  115 cols 37 lines
> >
> > Clearly the 115 cols is MORE fittable in a page than the 80 cols
> > [Though my argument for that is based on other structural/semantic principles]
> 
> There are certain specific situations where 80 (79) is the correct
> width to aim for, but even if you aren't going for that, there's still
> the general principle that longer lines are harder to read. So maybe
> you declare that your codebase is allowed to go to 100, or 120, but
> you don't want to let it run to 2048. No matter WHAT screen you're on,
> that's too wide!

yes we can agree on this -- arbitrary line lengths are almost certainly
unreadable.
The problem then becomes so what is optimal?
Interesting question... and one that certainly has no bearing on the characteristics.
of 30 year old technology.
Remember that the most important characteristics of code are almost always 
un-legislatable
eg choose 'nice' names.