About the 79 character line recommendation

[Steve Bergman]

As I study Python, I am trying to develop good, Pythonic, habits.  For
one thing, I am trying to keep Guido's the style guide in mind.

And I know that it starts out saying that it should not be applied in
an absolute fashion.

However, I am finding that the 79 character line prescription is not
optimal for readability.

Certainly, cutting back from the length of lines that I used to use has
*helped* readability.  But if I triy very hard to apply 79, I think
readability suffers.  If this were just something that was an issue
occasionally, I would just put it off to "know when to break the
rules".  However, find myself going to 90 to 100 characters very
frequently.  Now, if it were just me, I'd shoot for < 100.  However,
the Python philosophy includes making code easier for others to read,
as well.

So, I was wondering what more accomplished Python programmers thought
about this.

While I'm on this general topic, the guide mentions a pet peeve about
inserting more than one space to line up the "=" in assignment
statements.  To me, lining them up, even if it requires quite a few
extra spaces, helps readability quite a bit.  Comments?

Thanks,
Steve Bergman