On 80 columns should (not) be enough for everyone

[JMRyan]

Walter Bright <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote in
news:ii4an2$1npj$1 at digitalmars.com: 

> 80 columns came from how many characters would fit on a standard size
> 8.5*11 sheet of paper. Even punch cards followed this precedent.

This suggests (without exactly stating) one of my personal reasons for a
strict line length limit:  sometimes programmers like to print their
code.   Maybe I'm showing my age, but I find dead trees best for code
review.  One *can* use a smaller font (hard on the eyes) or print in
landscape (yuck--and even that is not enough for some code).

PS.  I knew about the punch card precident and have even used key punch
machines myself, but I didn't know that punch card length was based on
earlier precident.  Given the absurd length of line printer output of
the day, that surprises me.