Maximum Method Magnitude

While I was roughing out a series of coding standards for the company I currently work at, I decided to quantify what I mean by "a method that is too long." I prefer to have methods (and functions, for the non-object-oriented among you, or you functional programmers) that I can see all at once. I don't like to scroll up and down (or left and right) to see the whole method. I therefore decided to quantify how much I could see on my screen at once so I could put some specific numbers in the standard.

Note that this restriction is relaxed for methods that are case statements with many similar, small cases, or other simple and repetitive structures. Since these are more "data"-like than "code"-like, having to scroll up and down doesn't interrupt my flow of thought as much as with regular code.

I currently have a Dell flat-screen that I measure at 22" (559 mm) visible diagonal size (regardless of what the Dell sales literature says...). I run it at its default resolution (1680 horizonally by 1050 vertically). I have a few icons on my desktop on the left (heavy use) and right (lighter use), so that reduces my available screen size a bit. I also like to leave room at the bottom of the screen for the taskbar.

I bounce back and forth between three editors, my old standby Epsilon, the Microsoft Visual Studio Editor and Eclipse.

I run Epsilon at 8-point Courier New, which gives me approximately 60 lines vertically and 200 characters horizontally. I spend more time in this editor than the others, so I've spent more time getting it to settings that work for me.

I never changed the default settings for Visual Studio. When I configure it as I usually work (one column of panes on the right), I get about 45 lines vertically and 150 characters horizontally. Note that this is reduced during debugging, because more panes appear. Tools, Options, Environment, Fonts and Colors tells me that I'm using 10-point Courier New.

I also never changed with the font settings in Eclipse. Preferences, General, Appearance, Colors and Fonts tells me that I'm using 10-point Courier New. This gives me 40 lines by 140 characters with the default set of panes on the right, left and bottom.

For Visual Studio and Eclipse, I could probably go back and change the font size to be closer to my Epsilon setting and get similar results (if I'm ever motivated enough).

One added restriction. I really don't like lo-o-o-ong lines. There is a reading phenomenon called "doubling" where, when lines are too long, you lose track of which line is the next one you need to go back to when you read to the end of the current line. This is less of a problem in code than in text, given the "poetic" (as opposed to "text") layout of code. I still, however, find it reduces readability for me, especially when I have to scroll a couple of screenfuls to the right horizonally and then jump all the way back to the left and locate the next line of the code.

Given all of the above, I'm going to put 60 lines vertically by 100 characters horizonally into the standards document. We'll see what my team members think of my numbers.

Finally, apologies for the forced alliteration of the title. I just finished reading a new translation of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (by Simon Armitage), where there is heavy use of alliteration. If you like that sort of book, this one's a good read.