[flakes]

I care less about the length of the code, and more-so about the cognitive load. As the business logic grows, and the lines of code increases, the assignment of variables tend to get further and further away from their usage. What was once simple to read, now requires back-tracking as you read to double check exactly what they are.

Consider this contrived example:

    margin = (price - cost) / price

You can be reasonably sure what is being calculated, but it's hard to be exactly sure unless the surrounding context is very small. Having longer names allows you to keep more context for a line in isolation, meaning (personally) I require less backtracking while reading.

e.g. the above could be rewritten as the following, removing a lot of ambiguity:

    retail_margin = (retail_price - wholesale_cost) / retail_price

I find 80 character limits much too small in these cases. 100-120 characters is the sweet spot for me. I can still have 2 split panes of code on a single screen at once, and write more expressively without excessive linebreaks per statement.