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In times past, most people coded on a terminal that was 80 characters wide. In many languages this has become, if not holy then close to it.
But now many people have 20″+ monitors (or dual monitors), so screen real estate isn’t as prime as it once was.
So my question is this: in Visual Basic code, should code be limited to 80 characters, should there be no limit, or is it really a subjective thing, dependent on where you work and your own preferences?
I think it is subjective, but not completely. Limiting code to 80 characters will make it more readable. This is the reason that newspapers have their articles in columns. It is easier to read text if it doesn’t get much longer than 70 characters or so. I believe that people have done usability studies on this, but I don’t have the references to back that up.
So, again, it is subjective, and situation-dependent, but longer lines are harder to read. So I try to stay within 80 characters even though I don’t have to do so.