[arocks]

In my opinion the 80 character limit is mostly for better presentability. If the code appears in a blog post or a book, it is better to read and typeset if it is less than 80 characters. Though there are several articles[1] which explain other reasons for this legacy limitation.

I would be happy to read code more than 80 characters, if it doesn't have to be artificially cut into multiple lines (the screenshot in the post is a pretty good example). In fact, I find 80 characters too less and often set Emacs to use 100 characters as the limit.

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/903754/do-you-still-limit...

[mooism2]

IMO, given that most blog templates include copious margins, many don't allow readers to resize the text, and some don't even allow readers to scroll horizontally, 80 characters is far too long for a line of code in a blog post.

[arocks]

Sadly true. In this age of Responsive design, figuring out an optimal line limit for code samples is a tricky task indeed.