[davnicwil]

I know, on the surface it seems silly, but there are a couple of reasons I've found 80 chars makes things easier in real world workflows in 2019:

* Split panes in editors. With 80 chars, you can usually have two panes on screen along with a file tree, on most laptop screens. This is pretty nice to have.

* Code reviews in a web interface like Github/Gitlab - 80 chars means usually there's no need to pan, even when your browser window isn't full screen

[h1d]

Enforcing 80 chars on everyone for those reasons doesn't feel justifying.

It will definitely make people use weird variable names instead of meaningful ones.

  is_included = true

could turn into,

  inc = true #included or increment?

That's a far worse side effect than other points raised in this thread.

[ericb]

Even worse, abbreviations are terrible as there is one way to write a word correctly, and lots of ways to abbreviate it, so now you have to keep track of that too.

Was it inc? incl? incld? includ? in? incldd?

Now you have to break flow to go check. There's many ways it could be written and a chance for bugs to be introduced if you accidentally pick the wrong style. And when you read it, does the inc mean incorporated? included? includes? including? incapable? incestual?

[davnicwil]

That's a fair point, though I'll say in my experience, it's not been the case. If it were, I wouldn't do it as I agree with you that it outweighs the benefits I mentioned.