From observation, people on HN tend to discourage small replies that say nothing (such as this). It is likely that you would not have got downvoted if you had s

From observation, people on HN tend to discourage small replies that say nothing (such as this). It is likely that you would not have got downvoted if you had said what evidence you have to the contrary, given your opinion on it and why you think that, or even made an effort to debunk or state why you think a few common arguments for the line length being 80 chars are incorrect. Hacker News keeps clean discourse by downvoting comments that are not relevant or do not stimulate debate.