Whitespace: Python is very unique in that it *uses* whitespace for code blocking. It turns out to be very useful, since it visually cues the reader where code blocks begin and end by mandate. This creates many situations where code *starts* at the 10th indentation (40 characters in our standard, 80 characters in some Python standards).
FWIW, I think Google solves this problem by using two space idents. Though I suspect your note was trolling, I agree with you and find the 80 character width to be an anachronism. I've seen too many god-awful mid-phrase line wraps and trailing backslashes that could have been avoided with something a bit longer (like 100 chars). In addition to code wrapping, I'm a little bugged by indented comment blocks with 80 character line wrapping so that fewer than 40 chars are available per line of text. It sucks to update those comment blocks and then rewrap them so that a diff cannot easilly show what had changed. The days of 25x80 black and white CRTs are gone. Raymond