One little quibble in an excellent talk: 80 cols exists for a reason. It means people don't have to lay out their editor and shell to match your code. Your editor can be set to 80 col, your shell can too, and then you can leave it and it should work across languages, code-bases, and libraries. An extra line break here or there is preferable to having to drag windows around to read your code. At 80 cols I can get three editor windows on screen, allowing me great views of a lot of relevant code for the bit I'm writing, or a shell in place of one editor that I can be running tests on. Once 82 cols is okay, why not 84, or 90, or 100? What about when the middle column needs 84 cols, and I have to drag everything around. That's rude and productivity sapping.
I know some people program with one editor maximised and can have 200 character lines if they like, but a specific width as a convention is helpful. And the convention that is already widely used is going to make fewer people have to accommodate you. The 'ish' is useless in that regard.
I know some people program with one editor maximised and can have 200 character lines if they like, but a specific width as a convention is helpful. And the convention that is already widely used is going to make fewer people have to accommodate you. The 'ish' is useless in that regard.