My frustration stems from the fact that I find the argument "there are no papers with sufficient evidence" to be pedantic bullshit. Like yeah, sure, you aren't even wrong, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I've never seen anyone claim to like 180 char lines, whereas I've seen hordes of people who say it is very difficult for them to read that line length, and prefer something book-sized (lengthed?).
Which is basically my understanding of "too long" lines: The problem doesn't have to do with the length of the line itself / reading one line (which is what most people seem to focus on), it has to do with reliably returning to the beginning of the next line instead of accidentally drifting up or down.
So it wouldn't be much of a problem if there were other visual indicators (code lines have unique shapes instead of being a big block of text, and paragraphs with a blank line between them let you see more easily "I'm going from line 2 of 4 to line 3 of 4" so you don't actually have to track the line sideways. It's tracking the line back to its beginning in a big block of non-code text that's difficult.
Designer says: my opinion is right because A. Dan shows: A is not factual. Designer says: my opinion is right because of B.
Dan notices behaviours, and then he writes compellingly about those behaviours.
He has every right to make his choice. As do we, in deciding whether to read it.
