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[dead] originalgeek
Because if a statement needs more than 80 chars, it's either too long, or too deeply nested.
naner
The highest-rated answer doens't explain anything... he just says that IBM's punch cards had 80 colums. What does that have to do with conventions for entering text in an editor?
Someone
The card puncher was the editor.
jpterry
Relatedly, github insists on this width in both their language style guides and code windows on the web site. The VT100 had a 132 columns and was released 34 years ago!

Why are we still limiting code to 80 characters per line?

ternaryoperator
I find 132 columns is too wide for code (Good for tabular data, but not for code.) I want something I can read by running my eyes down the code. For me, this means no more than about 90 characters. A width of 132 cols means I have to stop and read back and forth, making it impossible to scan for something. Of course, YMMV.