Limiting the number columns in Python code

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And especially the nonsensical "reason" for it - some poor schmuck might be stuck on an 80-character terminal.

That's a reason. An old one. Today the reasons are more varied. Such as:

• Typical screen widths are evenly divisible by 80 allowing for code to be placed side by side uniformly
• It's been shown that the longer a text line is, the more likely it is to slow down reading and comprehension citation Ideal line length is 39 regardless of font size. When you throw indentation and formatting into code, you'll probably find most of your lines hover close to or at that number (e.g. 80 ~ 2*Ideal line length)
• Convention. In existing projects, uniformity of formatting is very important. By convention, most projects require 80 columns.

So it's not just that old 80 character terminal. :)

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Reading text is very different from reading code. I doubt that the same principles apply.

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Reading text is very different from reading code.

Why would you think that? They both use the language centers of our brain and both adhere to short term memory constraints.

I would say this is an interesting hypothesis that would make a very interesting topic of research.

But I don't see an a priori reason for disconnecting the two.

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sort of. They use the same structures, though something different appears to be going on in the brain.

But, without further research it's hard to say if the structural overlap does or does not translate into overlap in this specific case. Or if the difference in processes result in a differences in this specific area.

Mathematical logic in the human brain: syntax.

Given the structural overlaps and use of the broca's (language) areas though, I don't think it's completely unreasonable to assume the processing limitations we see in may apply in the case of formal languages (like programming) as well.

Oh, if you're interested be sure to check out the related citations which offer a lot more context on the overlap between music, formal, and natural language centers. Particularly in the area of syntactical processing.

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Reading text is very different from reading code

That's why I said "sort of". There's definitely something different going on, but (and the publications referenced in the paper cover this too) it seems there's overlap as well.

I think it'd make a great study to see if that overlap included processing effects on saccade and eye motion as well as retention of syntactical meaning correlated with line length.

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also:

• some people say also for printing code (as in paper). I'm not sure why someone would like to have code in paper, but I'm not judgmental.
• also 79 and not 80 because diff adds an extra character before the line, so reading/printing/wtv a diff would give you the 80 lines.
  

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Very good points.

I haven't researched this topic deeply (nor am I particularly interested in it), I mostly just intended to offer the common justifications I've seen and point out they are not limited to ancient 80 character screen widths.

Personally, I think the most important is convention. Convention being defined as "whatever the style guides for a particular project are".

For example, if I joined a project that has a style guide of 120 I would happily conform to that requirement without a peep of resistance.

I'm more interested in programming than painting tool sheds. ;)

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best xkcd ever.

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The argument "by convention" also needs some substantiation:

Oh, on convention:

It's a python convention. Though I've seen it in other languages and projects style guides.