Why is the Windows cmd.exe limited to 80 characters wide?

Question

I love stretching my terminal on unix. What is the history or reason behind windows lame command line?

Answer 1

Because MS value "backwards compatibility" over a lot of things and in this case I suspect it's a misplaced belief that it will somehow unnerve people if they don't have their standard 80 wide window.

Of course it could be that it was programmed for a fixed 80 chars width when that was pretty much universal, and the additional property settings were a bit of a hack.