On 80 columns should (not) be enough for everyone

[Walter Bright]

JMRyan wrote:
> 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.

Looking it up shows that the history is a bit more complicated than I said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollerith_card

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_per_line