Are character count line limits stupid?

I&#x27;ve always thought that using vertical space and indentation alone to organize code was a failure of imagination for IDE development. Why can&#x27;t the IDE allow for and auto-format code in a horizontal line? For instance, I can easily imagine background color shading as an indicator of logical depth. That would be fun to play with.<p>And along those lines, why do coding best practices always encourage vertically stretched out logic? Its analogous to writing all literature as poetry. That&#x27;s clearly suboptimal or at least limiting if you can read multiple ideas in a horizontal line.<p>So, I think, ideally, semantically-aware IDEs should allow for any formating and supply dynamic adjusters which can reformat code to the users preference, then save it in a presentation-agnostic encoding.

The author completely misses or ignores the volume of research on line length and readability[1]. &quot;I cannot find a single logical reason for why we would actually need character line limits when writing code - at least when we assume that part of the developer’s job is to structure and format their code in a readable way.&quot;<p>How about this one: if a developer chooses a smaller line width for readability reasons, depending on the editor to wrap code is a fail. The chance the editor wraps the line at a semantically sensible point approaches nil. Perhaps there&#x27;s a place for better code editors that wrap according to semantics, but for now, editors don&#x27;t take it into account.<p>Betteridge&#x27;s Law applies.<p>1 &quot;both very short and very long lines slow down reading by interrupting the normal pattern of eye movements and movements throughout the text. &quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;234578707_Optimal_Line_Length_in_Reading--A_Literature_Review" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;234578707_Optimal_L...</a>