Ask HN: Why are the titles 80 chars?

80 is a magic number for anyone who's been in the computer industry for a while.

Did you purposely make a comment 80 characters long?

Damn you, you made me actually count them! :-p

I totally meant to do that.

Also, do you always count characters in comments, or just this once?

I wanted to see how long a full 80-character title would be and used your comment as a test. Lo and behold... exactly 80.

I suppose because of a historical text mode screen width (80x25 and later 80x43 and 80x50 were all widely used de facto standards).

It's the number of columns on an IBM type punch card.

nostalgia here:

If your title is more than 80 characters, maybe you do not understand what a title is. Personally I think 80 is way to much.