80-Character Line Limit

Now-a-days we have computers which can show more than 80 characters at a time. "Keep lines fewer than 80 characters", Is this recommendation still valid?

80 columns exists for the same reason newspaper columns are about 2 inches and a novel is about 10-15 words wide---that is a width in which the human eye and brain can ready and fficiently absorb the information. Lines longer than 80 chars may be fine at times but they are generally a bad idea. Usually it's better to break the line up in some manner.

Can someone explain justification for an 80 character line limit? Its 2013; large 16:9 and 16:10 resolution monitors are the norm.

Optimal readability is attained with 60-70 characters. This is due to human psychology, and technology such as monitor size does not change it.When lines are longer it becomes more difficult for your eyes to keep track of where the next line is. Furthermore, code is not formatted as paragraphs but as separate lines, so you end up wasting a lot of screen estate for those few long lines. Having a low maximum means it will be close to the average and a larger proportion of the screen is utilized

Because there is an optimum range of characters per line for readability.

Please don't listen to this. You are in an incredibly small minority with that preference. Most readers prefer a line length of 50-75 characters, similar to a novel. Newspaper columns are even narrower than that for easier scanning. If I have to move my head or resize my browser to read your content, it's poorly formatted.

I can hardly work on code that's more than 80 characters across. Am I the only one?

A 65+ character line is already ugly. 80 is an arbitrary but sensible cutoff.

80 chars line width is too small imho. This isn’t the 90s anymore.

I have 3-4 files side by side, Everything else is max 80 chars. I really don't understand why people need more, because long lines are REALLY HARD to read.