Slashdot had a good discussion of this: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/06/2249204
The issue at hand is whether or not the 80 column per line limit should still be adhered to:
In summary...
Pro:
Con:
Thoughts?
My view is that the Three True Lengths are ... No, not zero, one and infinity; I mean 72, 80, and 132!!! --RonPerrella
I don't have a problem with the 80 column limit. First, as mentioned, modern editors and screens permit longer ones, so you *can* go beyond that it needed. If you are using something like a dumb terminal connected to a *nix box, you are probably using an editor (like vi) than can be told to wrap lines, or one like emacs, which can side-scroll, and your termianl probably has a 132 column mode if needed.
The question is how often you have to go beyond 80 characters in an editor?. For the majority of program code, you don't, though it may be useful viewing output listings.
Of course, your editor may impose restrictions. The wonderful E editor by Dr. David Nye packs an enormous number of features (including right *and* left margins) into a 5K(!) DOS COM file, but the method used to store text in memory silently truncates lines at 80 columns. The least restrictive editor I can recall is Sam Willmot's SLED editor for DOS, which allows lines of enormous size. I once did a test to see how long a line SLED would handle, and I recall it finally choking on a line over 100KB(!) in length.