[arrrg]

60 to 90 characters per column is widely used in typesetting for good readability. It’s probably not a good idea to go very far beyond 80 characters or so purely for readability, no matter the context.

[mantrax5]

Well context matters, especially if your language has you starting with at least two or three tabs for most of your code:

  package Foo {
      class Bar {
          void baz() {
              // Most code is nested *at least* this deep.
          }
      }
  }