[Nursie]

>> No one actually thinks 80 character displays are the reason to use 80 characters.

Err, yeah they do, I have been given exactly that reason on a few occasions, generally by older engineers who had experience with old-school machines that had precisely those screen dimensions. I don't disagree with your main point, but it's really not a straw man.

[NateDad]

Well, for most people it's a straw man. I've worked with some greybeards, and they are smart enough to know that they can resize the terminal on their modern laptop :)