I find it ironic that the author says:

  Why, in the name of all that is holy, do our modern style
  guides still force us to manually wrap text to fit within
  80 columns? (That’s four and a half vertical splits of 80
  columns each on my monitor!)

but chooses a blog template that holds the width constant at 1000px. Perhaps there is a reason not to grow without bound horizontally?

I use 80 characters because it's just easier to read than 120 char lines. Plus, I rarely need to break lines anyway, even at 80 chars ... what the heck are you writing that needs to be 120 chars wide?

Also, I have 2 screens with 4 work areas (each half a screen):

* mvim (at 90 chars wide)

* two terminals

* browser

* developer tools

At 120 chars lines, mvim now needs to be 125/130 chars wide and require it's own dedicated monitor.