I find the 80 char limit nice as a suggestion/warning, a way of saying "are you sure your approach should require lines of code this long?" So, a good way to ma

I find the 80 char limit nice as a suggestion/warning, a way of saying "are you sure your approach should require lines of code this long?" So, a good way to make sure that someone is writing readable code, which is otherwise the overall goal of PEP8. But, sometimes there are lines of code that are perfectly readable, maybe even more readable, despite exceeding 80 characters, and which become less readable by doing line continuations. (I would argue that line continuations make everything less readable, almost all of the time.) The other rule that I personally ignore, and when I'm managing a project I have my developers ignore, is the suggestion to use spaces instead of tab characters for indentation. Of course, with Python, you must use one or the other, but I prefer tabs. In both cases, it comes down to my belief that individual coders should have the ability to customize their experience without forcing it on everyone else. When you use spaces instead of tabs, and indeed, when you use line continuations, you're forcing your (the author's) exact view of the source code on everyone you're working with. If you use tabs, and don't use line continuations, others with specific needs (2 character tabs, 4 character tabs, 8 character tabs, 60 character-width editors, 100 character-width editors, etc.) can, with any modern editor, customize their view (using variable-width tab stops, and soft line wrapping) to what they're comfortable with.