>>22
80 was the forced limitation on old terminals so it became the standard. As the limitation dissolved, the standard remained for a variety of reasons:
1. A lot of OS/kernels/software that are still used and maintained were already written this way and consistency is important.
2. It encourages programmers to use concise statements rather than complicated one-liners.
3. It encourages programmers to think about logical breaks that could be split into subroutines rather than nested into one complicated function.
4. It allows power-coders to view multiple pages at fixed width without having to worry about vertical scrolling.
Lastly, there are really no benefits to using more than 80 columns. "I need 50% more width so I can write 50% longer lines that are 50% more levels of logic deeper" isn't going to convince anybody. For something hideous like Java I could see how 10-20 extra columns might be nice, but that's it. The Linux kernel is written with 80 columns with something like 8 tab spaces and I haven't heard about it hindering any of the contributors abilities. Seems like asking for more is just an excuse to write bad code.