Another reason that 80 cols mattered was because code could be printed properly on an 80 col dot matrix printer - way back then. Today, you can set your editor/ide to wrap it for you and you should - just 80 is such a waste of space on a modern display.
> 80 is such a waste of space on a modern display.
You're assuming you have just one window open, aren't you? There's less wasted space with 80 cols if you have multiple columns (of the same file, or different files). The math is elsewhere in this thread.
