Tabs vs Spaces

[obermd]

I think it had to do with what a mechanical typewriter was able to reliably insert. Remember, the tab key didn't shift x spaces, it shifted to the next tab stop, and yes, these were physical stops in a mechanical typewriter. Since these old machines worked on a fixed width font of 8 characters per inch and the physical tab stops were one inch apart, a tab became associated with 8 characters.

[megaadam]

I fine with that as long as you pick up the tab!

"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"

[Mike Hankey]

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[TNCaver]

Tabs. Converting the tabs to spaces in my code is a capital offense with immediate execution of the sentence.

If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.

[Choroid]

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[Mike Hankey]

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[Member_15777962]

I use Tabs for Columns, and spaces for strings, Carriage Return/Line Feed for new Row. Makes sense when Using Excel. For notepad it doesn't matter :-)

[Jim Spencer100]

If(spaceToAdd > 1) { Tab(); } else { Space(); } // This is how my brain does it :P

[englebart]

I prefer tabs. Our code size in bytes could double or quadruple or ? based on how many spaces were substituted. A lot of lines in brace delimited languages are 8 tabs, open or close brace. Python, stick to spaces!

[StatementTerminator]

I use tab and shift+tab in VS to keep things in neat code blocks. I don't really care how many spaces a tab is as long as it's consistent (I use the default). I've never seen a good reason to use spaces, whenever I see code like that it's usually a mess. It's possible to format code well using spaces, but that's not what I usually see in the wild.

[Juan Pablo Reyes Altamirano]

If it doesn't auto-indent, I will tab. But now I wonder if K&R C had anything to say about that :~

[James Curran]

I use Tabs (as the Good Lord Intended)

Truth, James

[Gary R Wheeler]

I used tabs until Visual Studio .NET 2003 unrecoverably broke the block indent/undent operation when you mixed tabs and spaces. After that I switched to spaces. And yes, this same operation has been broken ever since. VC6 would let you have {tab}{tab}{sp}{sp}stuff, and when you indented, that became {tab}{tab}{tab}{sp}{sp}stuff. All versions since then have stripped the leading tabs and/or spaces and inserted N tabs or N*s spaces. Studio has been through more than one editor rewrite since then, and it still doesn't work right. I'm using VS2019 now, and it occasionally decides to treat indents as blocks. It's not predictable though.

Software Zen: delete this;

[Gary R Wheeler]

Use RTL text (or even better bidi), I dare you.

Software Zen: delete this;

[ormonds]

Inches? I still use cubits.

[PIEBALDconsult]

So did Hitler.

[Daniel Wilianto]

I always use IDE for coding. All IDEs that I use convert tab to spaces automatically. I always press TAB on keyboard when I want to indent, though. Since less keystroke is faster and better. So you could say that I am a TAB guy? But I am perfectly fine with it saved as spaces.

[ormonds]

You just reinforced Godwin's Law.

[User 14060113]

I use tabs bc using spaces is rude. For example, I personally prefer .html or .xaml files with an indentation of 3 spaces, for other file types I prefer 4 spaces. This is not possible if some ruthless predecessor inserted spaces according to his, probably different, personal preferences in the source files. Or if I am the predecessor, then I would force my 3 spaces upon other people. That's not the way to treat each other.

[YSLGuru]

Bad tabs, bad Tabs, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they screw the code up for you?