Maybe more interesting is why we've retained some of the limitations of the past, while moving beyond others. 80 characters probably isn't as constraining when your variable names are limited to 6 character (as in Fortran77), and seem more constraining for identifiers like "MemberSubmissionAddressingWSDLParserExtension".

http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2007/11/07/and-the-longest-jre...