Ask HN: Why don't code editors ever have line numbers on by default?

That's a nice way to handle things, I've never tried Intellij maybe I will for my next project. Still if you have to look at log files for why your program crashed, line numbers are almost essential. Just a small gripe of mine that I never understood why it's done this way, maybe an IDE developer will see this and chime in.

I think line numbers help in gauging how large a class or method is if the file is longer than a few hundred lines. They also help organize things for me, if I roughly know what line a certain piece of code exists at I can usually find it faster (using jump to line) than without having line numbers.