Re: Which code style do you prefer the most?

On 06.03.2025 00:46, bart wrote:

On 05/03/2025 22:02, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 16:40:51 +0000, bart wrote:
>

People are forgetting that in the days of 80-character hardware,
identifiers were often limited to 6 characters or even fewer.

>
COBOL allowed for 30 from the beginning, as I recall. And PL/I allowed
31.

 
So:
 
ADD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA TO BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
GIVING CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC.
 
? A tight fit for an 80-column card I think.
 
I think linker symbols were more limited; on DEC typically 6 characters
for example.

Yes, I recall such limits. - Given how C++'s name-mangled identifiers
are passed this seems different nowadays; shorter identifiers getting
longer for the linker.

 
I suspect the 30 characters were as a much of an arbitrary
implementation limit as my 255; you wouldn't supposed to get anywhere
near it.

Most likely. - Also the habits seem to have been different back these
days; using shorter names and not "stories" for identifying IT-items.

 

Whatever it was you meant by “80-character hardware” (see discussion
elsewhere) ...

 
Punched cards, teletypes and VDUs tended to use 72/80 columns.

As already mentioned elsethread there have been also other sizes. The
perceived supremacy of 80 columns cards were probably due to IBM's
predominance on the IT sector, at least in the contexts I worked in
or had insights in.

The first
text display I owned used 64. I think home or small-business printers
(not lineprinters) were based around 80 columns too (10cpi over 8 inches).

I programmed on an Olivetti P6060 around 1980; a system with a BASIC
compiler. It had a single-line display of 32 characters length, the
output was on thermo-paper and it could plot and print characters in
an 80 columns format. I think also the line length of that BASIC was
restricted to 80 characters. As it was I seem to recall on Commodore
systems (PET, CBM). A Sharp BASIC pocket calculator from these days
had also a 80 characters restriction for BASIC programs, its optional
thermo-printer supported 24 characters width (but obviously wasn't
designed for printing other things than numbers); for a disassembler
that I wrote with compact mnemonics it was sufficient, though.

Janis