CodeQuality
Post #2246 · source on Telegram
A modest proposal for code line length limits
Description
A screenshot of a tweet from user Kat Maddox (@ctrlshifti). The tweet, posted on October 25th, reads: 'how many characters should each line of code be limited to? I believe my suggestion of "0" has not been properly considered'. The tweet shows engagement with 123 replies, 194 retweets, and 2,126 likes. The image captures a moment of satirical tech humor, taking the common developer debate about maximum line length (e.g., 80 or 120 characters) to its logical and absurd extreme. The joke resonates with experienced engineers who have participated in endless 'bikeshedding' over trivial style guide rules, suggesting that the only truly perfect line of code is one that doesn't exist, thereby containing no bugs or style violations
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9Comment deleted
The '0 characters per line' standard is the only coding style that guarantees a 100% reduction in both bugs and billable hours
Architecture council finally ended the 80-vs-120 bikeshed: we adopted a 0-column limit, shipped an empty repo, and every SAST tool now proudly reports “0 issues found.”
After 20 years of arguing whether it should be 80, 100, or 120 characters per line, we finally found the solution that makes everyone equally unhappy: zero. At least the merge conflicts will be consistent - everything conflicts with nothing
Ah yes, the zero-character line limit - finally, a coding standard that guarantees zero bugs, zero technical debt, and 100% test coverage. It's the logical conclusion to every 'tabs vs spaces' and '80 vs 120 character' holy war: if we can't agree on the limit, just eliminate the code entirely. The ultimate expression of 'the best code is no code,' and it pairs beautifully with that 10x engineer who rewrote the entire monolith by deleting it. Ship it to production - what could possibly go wrong with an empty repository?
25 chars per line: The surefire way to turn a concise lambda into a 20-line odyssey of ternary nesting
PEP8 says 79, Prettier says 80, enterprise says 120 - 0 chars per line is the only setting that yields zero bugs, zero merge conflicts, and 100% test coverage by vacuity
ESLint max-len: 0 - perfect: every PR is a deletion, bug count drops to zero, and for once the system matches the architecture diagram
no code — no bugs Comment deleted
no dev – no code Comment deleted