In my case, it's coming from a glass teletype background, where the tube screens were 80 chars wide, and not resizable. And 80 column punch cards before that...
Unix (as implemented in practice) hasn't forced 80 columns for decades. But it's desirable to get multiple files (or multiple views on the same file) across the screen, and agreeing a limit makes that a great deal more practical.
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Date: 2009-05-11 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-11 06:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-11 08:10 pm (UTC)