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Comment by xgme | Hacker News Reader

Isn't "increased width" an ungodly sin to the developer lord? If anything, we want to see more in a given space, not less...

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> Isn't "increased width" an ungodly sin to the developer lord? If anything we want to see more in a given space, not less...

I think it increases readability. I need to read what I'm looking at, not a lot of things I'm not looking at.

Not if a part of a line is out of the window right? This makes splitting harder, therefore, reading harder

Why not just use word wrapping?

I'm already going with 80 or 120 chars per line. Why would I word wrap well written code?

Also word wrappings will lose all the preceding tabs. It makes it 100x harder to read.

The issue is I will have less split space.

> Also word wrappings will lose all the preceding tabs. It makes it 100x harder to read.

This depends on your editor. I know VS Code supports indentation/alignment of wrapped words. I believe Emacs and Vim support it as well.

I find reading code with word wrapping nearly impossible.

Seems niche?

I don't think that's enough of a reason to say the design choice is a sin for everyone.

Line length linters are kinda standard. The goal is to have "shorter lines".

Line length doesn't change just because the font itself is wider.

Seems like the same amount of characters that are each wider would be wider? So you would see less characters on a line with the same amount of characters

Well yes and no. The line would visually become longer, but if we're talking enforced line length by IDE's, say 80 characters, then the line would still be 80 characters long, but just take up visually more horizontal space and so whether or not you see the same amount of characters on a line would become an issue of how much horizontal screen space do you afford for code.

Then make your window wider. Bam, problem solved.

"But then I can't see as many windows!" That brings us back to the GP's I need to see what I'm looking at, not what I'm not looking at". When you want to look at those other windows, bring them to the foreground and let them obscure this one.

That's how I think about it too. I use Anka/Coder Narrow. It takes some getting used to, but may enable using an additional editor window at certain monitor sizes.

Another commenter replied that all editors have word wrap, but the resulting code doesn't look great, IMHO. I prefer full control.

https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/anka-coder-narrow

For terminal/console use wide fonts hurt IMHO. I really like Iosevka, it even has a terminal optimized version that's explicitly less wide: https://typeof.net/Iosevka/

Considering we have 80-column conventions and widescreen monitors... no?

Wider fonts are significantly easier to read than narrow fonts which is the main point a programmer typically optimizes for. Since most editors can reflow anyways and programmers are relatively conservatives for max width anyways my general experience is that I have more than enough space on the right unused.

This assumes that the code you are writing will actually be read by someone later on. A bold assumption to make.

It's not about posterity but reading back what you just wrote a minute ago. That's not a very bold assumption.

It's strange, I find the complete opposite to be true. A narrower font allows my brain to grasp the line quicker, without having to move my eyes as much.

I would be shocked if this was not up to personal preference :)

Stay away from Vulf Mono then!

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