That's why I have my editor set to use the Fibbonacci sequence as tab stops.

Found the guy using Nucleus

Who codes in a 2-byte encoding?!

We get it, you dereference

Try {

Well I mean they did try.

git blame, on the other hand...

Oracle requires spaces in their standards, so Sun now must recommend spaces.

I...I think you've just converted me

Hear, hear!

Yes. People keep saying "configure your editor to insert 4 spaces per tab", but always seem to forget everything else about editing space-indented code. If I accidentally hit a character-inserting key that I didn't want to while editing text, then I want backspace to undo the insertion correctly.

Are there any editors that get this correct? I personally use vim for a number of reasons, but it definitely can't be configured into handling <TAB> and <BACKSPACE> correctly when indenting with spaces.

I use Atom and it deletes 4 spaces the same way as one tab.

I have the same issue with visual studio. Ctrl+backspace, tab, tab.. is what I end up doing.

This is one of the reasons I'm an Emacs user. I can highlight the whole buffer and hit Tab once to automatically indent a whole file in accordance with whatever style guide is applicable to my current language, and I can do so with spaces.

Backspace is only for vi heathens.

You can just use shift+tab (tabs from right to left) instead of backspace.

Depends on your editor, I guess. I never have those issues with vim. Well, I did until I learnt not to use it like notepad.

Use an IDE that supports shift-tabbing back?

Qt Creator (my personal favorite C/C++ IDE) handles it well also.

Do you still indent your code manually? It's 2016, man, why just don't let editor do all that boring stuff?

particularly if you're pure evil and don't use a monospace font

covers ears LALALALALA!

Its a mess, some people even do 3 spaces. This is why tabs are better, spacies can't even agree on number of spaces. With a tab the ones reading the code can set indentation width dependent on a balance of readability and screen width. That said I use whatever is more prevalent in the language I'm writing in. I don't claim to be special enough to embark on a tab vs space crusade, consistency is more important than both.

nope. You moved your carriage to the next tab stop. Which was setup various ways depending on the manufacture.

Tabs and spaces look the same

Not to a computer

You misunderstand my point. The original intended purpose of the tab was not to serve as indentation exactly but to save typists from pressing space four times.

Also, a space is always a character in width, whereas a tab is utterly lawless and inconsistent.

Edit: missed a space

"consistency and beauty" when you want to align multiple lines independent of indentation level. E.g. a list of numbers of varying magnitudes or function arguments that span multiple lines.

float foo1    =       0.03;
float foobar  =       0.04;
float foobaz  =      10.80;
float qux     =      -3.14;
float quux    =   97824.03;
float corge   = 1618033.99;
dostuff(NULL, the, number, of, NULL, useless, NULL,
        parameters, NULL, is, NULL, too, damn, NULL,
        high, NULL, 3.14);

Says your grandma.

I don't need a backspace to fix indentation level, my <TAB> key doesn't insert tab-or-spaces-or-poop-emoji-whatever either, it just INDENTS CODE to the right position the way I configured it (no '\t's), so I don't f****** care.

[deleted]

— It's a free country, ain't it?

— Well it ain't a free shop, is it? So fuck off!

it's your editor

You can't always view files using your preferred editor, and sometimes you must view them on a foreign computer. Spaces will be consistent, while tabs are likely different.

Well the philosophy that I enjoy using is based on "write once, run anywhere". This means including all of the libraries with the code, including project files with the code, and generally making the code the easiest possible to work with and run.

This includes formatting, and with formatting comes spacing. The least finicky of the two, between spaces and tabs, is spaces. They always take up one character space. They are predictable. From my editor, to anyone elses editor, it will all display pretty much the same.

Even if they happen to be using notepad for some reason. They won't be forced to deal with 8-character tabs.

All this being said, I still use the tab key. I don't pound on the space key like some sort of caveman.

Actually, that's dumb. 2 spaces isn't enough to see a significant difference.

4 spaces seems pretty good, but 3 spaces seems just right. I don't know many people that use 3 spaces though. It usually seems to either be 2 or 4.

Yeah, doubled tabs are truly evil.

Sometimes I'm forced to if I have to make a fix and I only have command line compilers to work with. However, that's usually on Linux, and I just use nano at that point. Which is pretty good about tabs.

http://i.imgur.com/sWkqx13.gifv

Disgusting.

GIt Fucked. HARD G MASTER RACE

We do. Pretty much every IDE has the option to decide whether or not to put tabs or spaces when tab is pressed.

What, redefine the tab character to mean an arbitrary number of spaces?

Hmm...

That's either utter idiocy or genius. I honestly can't tell which.

There's no reason to not use the tab key, I use it myself to make proper indentation (with space symbols) in emacs all the time :)

P.S. $0.02 from JWZ

It's not defeat if it was never a goal to begin with.

And... if you're developing on Windows for .Net, your only real choice is Visual Studio. There's probably some extension somewhere which does that, but why fight it?

Python All developers hate him!

I just can't interpret this absurd approach

and that's part of the reason I don't use python

dude stop

Encode morse-messages in your whitespace with tabwidth=1 where tab is long while space is short.

https://xkcd.com/1167/

I use double tabs.

Edit: but I'm open to use 4 1-space tabs.

No, two spaces. I don't actually stand by that, but I once worked on a project where that was enforced. Everything looked do weird, the angles were all wrong.

Well, I think we can reach a compromise.

The new company standard will be 3 spaces.

Of course:

class.  method();

Plus you never have to worry about forgetting a semicolon; it's always there!

There are some developers at my work who do the same thing, and if I say "tab," some of them will actually go off on a rant about it. I'm trying to be efficient here, dammit. I don't care if you want to use spaces instead of tabs, but "tab" has half the syllables of "indent" a quarter the syllables of "hit space four times."

Why not use $editor instead of the IDE?

OK, it's on my "to research" list now.

It's Zoidberg from the show Futurama.

:)

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This is an autogenerated response. source | /u/HugoNikanor

Only that Python already decided to be on the space side of the war. They even disallow the use of Smart Tabs :/

I'm not trying to make my code pretty. I'm trying to remove as much of it as I can without sacrificing too much readability. :)

What?! That makes no sense, with tabs each tab means exactly one level of indentation. How it displays is not important, only the semantics are important, and the semantics of tabs are well-defined.

Using spaces to indent makes the compiler/interpreter have to guess what indentation level a given number of spaces means, and making that guess requires the context of the surrounding code. It's a much more difficult problem than just counting tabs.

I don't see why the F# developers would have done that.

)

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This is an autogenerated response. source | /u/HugoNikanor

Requires larger teams that actually have time to do code reviews :(

I would argue that this:

if ((some() == COMPLETELY) && (contrived() == example) || (to_illustrate() != a_point()))
    ...
}

is harder for a human to quickly read and parse than this:

if ((some()          == COMPLETELY) &&    // this is a comment
    (contrived()     == example)    ||    // that can explain
    (to_illustrate() != a_point()))       // some stuff
{
    ...
}

In the latter example, a long and complex expression is broken up across multiple lines such that each line contains a smaller sub-expression that is easier to understand, and each of the components of each sub-expression are aligned so as to highlight the similarities and differences between them. Note also the addition of the comments that can now be used to provide some explanation of each sub-expression.

Another example:

result = some_function(FIRST_THING, "a string", an_object, true, false, &x);

Could be improved as follows:

result = some_function(
    /* which_thing:  */ FIRST_THING,
    /* description:  */ "a string",
    /* the_thing:    */ an_object,    // a little note about this object
    /* is_a_foo:     */ true,
    /* is_a_bar:     */ false,
    /* output_thing: */ &x);

(Of course, using proper named parameters would be better if the language supported it)

Both of these examples are, of course, contrived and we should not actually write code like that, but they serve as demonstrations of how breaking code up across multiple lines and adding alignment can improve readability without having anything to do with editor width.

I think notepad has this feature too.

Well then I'd love to see what's in the 301kb email. Probably those signatures with the shitload of images and quotes in colored comic sans

Some people just like to watch the world burn.

Usually I just use SHIFT-TAB (in Sublime).

Now add 2 spaces in some code and try to delete just the last space.

Configuring backspace to remove more than 1 characters makes it hard to deal with alignment and everything that isn't indentation.

set softtabstop=4

It's pretty damn useful.

But then it doesn't properly delete non-indentation spaces.

But Sublime doesn't behave well if you're trying to delete a single space character (unless it just happens to be 1 past the indentation grid).

Habits die hard. If I hit a key I didn't mean to and it inserted a character I don't want, I instinctively press backspace to remove it. Changing that to Shift-Tab if I accidentally press tab increases my cognitive load (because it becomes an exception to the backspace-as-insertion-undo rule) and the chance that I forget what I had intended to type.

Spaces are always better when sharing code, though, if you want to make sure the formatting is consistent on all editors.

But why would you want that? Using tabs allows the reader to set how wide they'd like indentation to be. By choosing to use spaces to "make sure the formatting is consistent", you are intentionally forcing the reader to view the code in the way that you are comfortable with, not the way that they are comfortable with.

To give you an example, I use an indentation width of 8. Let's assume that you like an indentation width of 4. If I send you my tab-indented code and you open it in your editor, you will see an indentation width of 4, which is comfortable for you. If I first convert my code to use spaces, then you will see code with an indentation width of 8, which is not to your liking. Wouldn't you rather I send you code that you can view as you like, not as I like?

Tabs let me align those comments without having to count the number of spaces or press space until I reach the Comment Column.

but what if variable names are longer than tabsize ? :)

?????

That's how everyone uses spaces. No one (good) is using single space indentation. Everyone sets up the tab key to insert 2 or 4 spaces. And god, no one is actually pressing the space bar 4 times. Spaces instead of tabs are the exact same thing except the tab character width is less standardized. Switch to spaces ffs.

This eternal holy war needs to die.

ProcessWire. It's a great CMS but they've decided to make up their own styleguide. But they've added Composer support so it's also taking some good steps.

But they don't work interchangeably like in this example

True, but CPython is perfectly happy if you indent using tabs.

If I'm working on a personal project (where I'm the only developer/maintainer), then I don't care about language standards, I'm going to use the style that's best for me.

Another fine reason not to use Python for anything. As if there weren't enough reasons already.