72 character lines is unnatural to read for long sentences (especially in web browsers).
Also, less has line wrapping and who develops using 80 character terminals anymore? Maybe the author has a time machine back to 1981? I want access to that!
A lot of people still prefer work with revision control tools from a standard unix command line.... in an 80x25-ish window.....especially when it comes to debugging and investigating things (so we can use all our other nice shell text processing tools to make sense of things)
Something that fits nicely in that space is helpful in that case.
Also, less has line wrapping and who develops using 80 character terminals anymore? Maybe the author has a time machine back to 1981? I want access to that!