[crazygringo]

Since in most cases, most lines don't even reach 80 characters, or they're long enough to still wrap at 120, there's not a lot of optimization going on.

Going from 80 to 120 will net you, what -- an extra 2 or 4 lines in your viewport?

It's not worth the optimization when you lose so much for the reasons I described.

[conductr]

If I wanted extra lines, I'd probably use my monitors in tall mode. I mainly just don't want to think about line wrapping at all, that's the optimization for me.

I also tend to work on a single file at a time versus trying to view multiple files side by side. But when I do want to do that, I'm not trying to work on a laptop monitor, so I have 2 monitors for that use case.

The white space I have available but typically don't use, simply doesn't bother me. I like some white space, I'm not seeking out density as some productivity hack, I can tab to another file when I want to see it, seeing them both at same time isn't a huge requirement of mine.

It sounds like you have a job that has you frequently doing code jams on a tiny monitor (why? you got pulled into someone's office? you coding on a train?) so this works for your normal situations. You're not understanding that I avoid those situations. I code from a desk with a full setup or I don't code, I take notes about what changes need to be done when I get back to coding.