Matthew Lang

For the last few weeks, I’ve been using the lire app on iOS for reading through my RSS subscriptions.

There’s a number of great little features in lire, but the pull to a different RSS client didn’t last long. In the last few days, I’ve deleted the app and started using Feedbin again on iOS. As a client, Feedbin has everything I need and it doesn’t need to have space on my home screen in order to access it. Just a bookmark in my browser is enough to find it.

In the last couple of days I also noticed an article that was doing the rounds about the state of RSS apps on the macOS platform. Before I was using the lire app, I was still using Feedbin in my browser to read my RSS subscriptions when working through the day. A pinned tab in the browser is enough for my needs.

There’s only two cases where I’ll use a native app.

1. When the app’s core functionality isn’t available on the web like a text editor or source code control.
2. When I prefer to use a native app over a web based app for cases like email and chat.

Native apps do offer a number of great benefits over web based apps, but in most cases I prefer the flexibility of web based apps. Easy to access for users on multiple platforms and easy for the app’s developers to maintain.

So it’s back to using Feedbin on the web again, but more importantly back to using another web app again.

Did I miss the heated and crazy developer debate that the new accepted line length is 120 characters?

Joking aside, I’d like to know if anyone else has changed their coding standards to allow for a bigger line length because of changes in source code management tools.

For a long time I’ve used 80 characters as a guideline as opposed to a set rule. Sometimes I’ll go over this but most of the time I don’t.

With bigger displays everywhere though, it appears that developers are switching to a larger line length when it comes to their coding standards.