Tabs vs Spaces

[Choroid]

Competition for your "PartsBin" Wait... What? I Made a Small Parts Organizer with Drawers from Cardboard! - YouTube[^] Perhaps include this as an add on

[Mike Hankey]

Awesome thanks for the link. Good storage alternative, especially since the organizers are so dang expensive.

PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - A updated version available! JaxCoder.com

[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?

[YSLGuru]

As a SQL dev it's SPACES all the way. I use a TAB to insert 2 spaces but never use the TAB character within my code.

[Roger House]

Ditto

[Shmoken99]

Is Spaces a slang term for Diet Coke? If so I definitely prefer it to Tab.

[DRHuff]

No, no, no! If you think that you have found a good argument on the internet... :-D Thanks for the comment though. It is surprising the number of times I have brought this point up and people that were dead set against tabs get a surprised look on their faces. Never thought of that before. Every indentation is 1 tab - what you want it to look like is up to you. And if you use notepad to look at code - well I can't help everybody!

If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.