Walter Bright <newshou...@digitalmars.com> wrote in news:ii4an2$1npj$1...@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.
