I'm one of those that sticks with 80x25 because I had decades of it influence me.
I do understand, though, that it's dumb, and wouldn't force it on others.
I do understand, though, that it's dumb, and wouldn't force it on others.
I'd advocate every developer conforms to PEP-8 rules (80-char, nesting limits, etc), at least for a 3-12 month period. They'll be a better developer for it.
An 80+ character line is also a code smell for me; if a statement is so complex that it pushes past the 80 character mark and it can't be split into smaller chunks on their own lines, then I know for sure that something needs refactored (whether it be the statement itself or the nested control structures around it).
Since you're into dead tree editions, here's a fun fact you may not know: The fibers in newsprint are aligned vertically so that you can easily tear out an article vertically along its column. Tearing horizontally cleanly is significantly more difficult.
Source: Worked for two major newspaper companies.
Humidity enlarges the fibres, but doesn't get them longer. In a humid environment a book grows wider but not taller.
If the paper is oriented the other way, the paper would grow taller and the spine of the book, which is stitched and glued, would force the paper to warp and became ondulated.
If there's anything wrong with it, it's that it's too big!
Ideally we might have settled on something like newspaper column widths for readability - which are way less than 80.