One minor advantage which wasn’t so relevant in 2008: 80 character lines are much easier to read on a smartphone. This is especially true for Safari on iOS, which always seems to make bad wrapping / sizing decisions with plain text.
ETA: thinking back on it, several years ago I switched from 120 characters to 80 specifically because of this. I don’t have a car, so I read a lot of code on my phone while taking public transit.
ETA: thinking back on it, several years ago I switched from 120 characters to 80 specifically because of this. I don’t have a car, so I read a lot of code on my phone while taking public transit.