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Comment by berntb | Hacker News Reader

It is fascinating to see people having 24+" monitors -- and seeing ca 30 lines of code on their screen, because of the real estate eaten by their IDEs.

To add maiming to injury, these guys write in modern Cobol (a.k.a Java).

Not to mention that they can't print the code -- since it is 150+ chars wide(!) -- and browse it at a cafe. (I love my iPad, but It'll be iPad 3 before it is half as nice for browsing code [edit: as paper].)

I have about 2 full pages of code on the same size of monitor. Of scripting language. I doubt that I have abnormally bad memory or write too complex code... I just like to be productive.

Edit: oK, downvote if you want. But please also add a counter argument for wasting all that screen area?

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"Not to mention that they can't print the code -- since it is 150+ chars wide(!) -- and browse it at a cafe."

You can't print code longer than 150 characters wide?

Since when?

Sigh, are you trolling or new? OK, I'll answer.

The point of printing and browsing code is that it is easier and nicer than to read it on a screen (you'll have a portable with you at the cafe anyway to search, annotate, etc.) If you get lots of broken lines, it isn't readable.

Point was, you lose a capability with long lines -- a nice way to go over code. This is important for many of us.

Edit: Point jedsmith, write it off as grumpy-old-man syndrome. Sigh, I just can't get that this isn't understood by everyone, anymore.

You could have made that point without the personal attack.

Broken lines?

We no longer live in the days of typewriters or daisychain printers with fixed column widths.

We now have these wonderful things called laser printers which can print using fonts.

Fonts are resizeable. Even to the point that 150+ columns could be fit on one unbroken line.

And even lines that long can be quite readable if you print in landscape.

Let me first not that printing was a little sub point.

Second, in what you quote from: easier and nicer than to read it on a screen.

So your argument seems to be that it is equally nice to read fewer lines of paper in a smaller font. Huh? Also, my eyes can't handle 4 pages on a page any more -- and your eyes won't be able to do that after 40, either.

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