Yeah - I was thinking about a Java codebase I was looking at a while back that had ultra verbose variable names like "BackupCopyOfLedgerUsedInWorstCaseScenarioProjections" You couldn’t even do a simple addition in 80 characters.
This limitation seems fairly language specific, and has a lot of side effects for the rest of your style guide.
On a semi-related subject, what about the vertical limit of the code? I often heard that a function should fit in one page, but that also depends on the screen resolution. Also, the 80 chars rule would increase the amount of line instead. How do people deal with that in general?