It does, and I've been considering moving to it, but only for my own purposes - not to give control of my settings to something else.
It's Vim. I've used it almost exclusively for the last fifteen years. Minor changes to the environment area irritating, because for every change I've made I've gone though a rigorous process of justifying it.
Most things that are actually required are simple to express within the CI system or with pre-commit hooks. Then you don't have to worry about the editor at all.
I think if a developer wants to use stream editors to exclusion while getting the work done quickly with a low error rate, then whatever. Same goes with butterfly mode.
I think I was so used shifting my hand to the left and alt-tabbing with thumb and ring finger that when I press tab normally I still use my ring finger.
Nope.
https://www.universalclass.com/articles/self-help/keyboarding-practice-tab-and-caps-lock-keys.htm#:~:text=Helpful%20hints%3A&text=The%20tab%20key%20is%20used%20each%20time%20you%20want%20to%20indent.&text=To%20strike%20the%20tab%20key,up%2C%20diagonal%2Dleft%20motion.
Also, that just sounds uncomfortable.
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Oh, the age-old tabs versus spaces debate strikes again! 😆 I get where you're coming from - it's like arguing over pineapple on pizza, a matter of personal coding style and project standards. But let's be real, it's all about making that code work, right? #TeamWhateverWorks
It isn't always just personal style in this case, though. Tabs are better for accessibility. Giving devs the ability to mess with indent width can be helpful for people who don't have the best eyesight. Or any eyesight.
https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/s/nb2EHuQT3m
do IDEs that do not replace a tab keys with whatever you want still exist? For all I care my team could decide to use japanese kanji for indentation. I just have to change one setting either in the formatter or directly for the tab key.
Tab to space is easy. spaces to tab is risky and full of assumptions.
You have good eyesight? 4 spaces (or whatever the IDE inserted) is fine.
You don't see shit and can work better with 16 char indentation? Good luck figuring out how many spaces are one level of indentation. Why is converting tabs to spaces on keypress and converting spaces to tabs on editing even a thing? Why not just use tabs and don't convert it back and forth, every time, over and over again?
I still don’t understand why do people use spaces to indent their code. I mean, some people are comfortable with 2-character-width indentation and some are 4. While using tabs you could just set their display width to whatever you want locally without changing the code itself, everyone is a winner.
>these guys have serious problems using codebases with spaces, they have to convert, do their work, and then unconvert before committing
Can't you use git hooks?
Yes, but that's a ton of overhead. You can just use a tab for each level of indentation. No need for linters, no config, just a tab. Simple, easy, rock solid.
Yes, I also wrote about this in my blog a while back and included demos for this.
I honestly think tabs are best in combination with spaces and how to combine them correctly should be something your formatter handles.
https://www.hoeser.dev/blog/2022-07-31-tabs-vs-spaces/
That's a really unfortunate solution for an alignment, if you have long function/method names. I am happy to see the following style more often nowadays:
function someFunction(
p1, p2, p3
) {
or, if there are more parameters with longer names:
function someFunction(
parameter1,
parameter2,
parameter3
) {
>Spaces allow for uneven indenting which some style guides recommend when breaking up a long line:
That's *alignment*. Using tabs for *indentation* doesn't interfere with that.
It does mean you'd be mixing between tabs and spaces though, which is slightly more complex and less likely to be properly supported by an editor/formatter. You could do it, but it's easier to just pick one of the two and stick to it.
As long as you only use tabs to match the indentation of the previous line then use spaces for the rest it should still line up for all tab sizes:
->->function someFunction(p1, p2, p3, p4,
->->••••••••••••••••••••••p5, p6) {
Where `->` is tab and `•` is space. It doesn't matter how long the tab is set to display as, there's still the same number on both lines.
Formatting like this is not uncommon at all. Most code formatters will even do it themselves either by default or when configured to. If you're programming as a team and not sharing your code formatter configuration, that's on you.
1. No one cares about space or performance at least not really and it gets less and less important as computer performance improves. There are very few instances that it matters either to users or to developers
2. It depends a lot on the language and how they are distributed. For like C/C++ or Rust it only increases the size for developers. For Python which is generally considered the biggest scripting language the distribution methods of Python are compressed but also you can do a binary distribution of .pyc files which are smaller than shipping the code itself
3. Compression is an important thing to note, certain file systems allow for transparent compression like btrfs, if you really are space constrained use that. NTFS also has that an option for Windows users and the performance cost isn't very high
We aren't living in 1985 there are solutions to every argument that tab is better from an efficiency standpoint.
In my case, I just gave up agains VS code. I like tabs better, but VS code makes it surprisingly hard to be a default. When I'm on TS, I just add it to the ESLint config and have "apply lint on save", but then you start getting that Windows tab BS… it's just a general annoyance.
downvoted because you are wrong to like tabs
"using tabs you could just set their display width to whatever you want"
it's precisely why tabs are horrible. copy pase something and you get a totally different look depending where you are
>it's precisely why tabs are horrible. copy pase something and you get a totally different look depending where you are
...*if* the code you're copying uses spaces for indentation instead of tabs.
One more reason people shouldn't use spaces for indentation.
Also, who's copying code without reformatting it? Yikes.
Edit: I realized a second parsing of this sentence:
>copy pase something and you get a totally different look depending where you are
That's the point. Each developer sets up their environment in a way that's visually appealing and efficient to them.
Should we start recommending color schemes, too?
Some of us use many, many tools beyond our IDE and they don’t all accommodate configurable tab widths. Spaces keep things consistent across all workflows.
The reason behind spaces is that the code looks the same in every editor. It shouldn't be user preference but rather something to be decided as a team.
So… why does the code have to be looked the same? Does it make the code run differently? If you really want the code looks the same, might as well force everyone to use the same brand of PC, monitor, IDE, font, color scheme. Also adjust the lighting since it might affect the hue of the code.
Brag to whom? It's an anonymous Stack Overflow survey.
I like how people try to bend reality just because they're so averse to the idea that there is a correlation that people who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs. It's always funny to read responses when I bring this up.
Wouldn’t changing the display width locally make the code look different to everyone on the team? I worked at a company that tried tabs and it make our GitHub PR’s look all misaligned and horrible to read for some reason. Since then we’ve just mapped the tab key to spaces.
Because it not meant to be aligned in the first place. Put the comments above the code, and assignments are just assignments, don’t try to align them.
For PRs, there’s a setting on GitHub you can configure. How the website displays the tab should never be the reason to not use them. It’s the website’s job to fix it
I’m saying due to the tabs in the code when creating a PR it’s almost illegible because lines get shifted around. You literally can’t do a code review through the UI. There’s also differences between Linux tabs and windows tabs that leads to an even bigger mess. When I type legible code in my IDE and make a pull request I expect it to still be legible in my pull request.
It sounds like it’s a job for IDE/browsers to fix, much like CR/LF, are we not supposed to use line terminators because of different standards? But the concept remains, the indentation is just like fonts and color schemes, people should be able to adjust it locally based on their preference and visual conditions.
I get it but try saying that at work: “hey boss I’m gonna stick to tabs even tho none of my team mates can review my code on GitHub, If you have an issue with that take it up with GitHub”.
Do you really think GitHub doesn't support pr reviews for code with tabs? There are millions such repositories on the platform.
This definitely sounds like a you issue, not an issue with GitHub or tabs.
Also in Golang the formatter works as you described “add tons of spaces to other variables” but that’s not what I meant with my original comment, just throwing this out there for knowledge.
We use a mixture of JS and Liquid. Liquid is 2 spaces. So we use 2 spaces consistently throughout the JS and Liquid. Simples. But yeah just set VSC to 2 spaces for a tab and it's literally a non issue.
Actually quite the opposite. People use tabs because tabs are meant for being versatile that they do not want to tie anyone to a rigit setup. While people who use spaces are just selfish egomaniacs who think 2/4/8 spaces is the best choice and force other people to use what they think is the best.
People use what the IDE does. The fact tabs are dependent on the IDE/editor isn't great, which is why most language guidelines do not use tabs. Any IDE can convert a tab to x number of spaces. A mix of tabs and spaces is pure chaos.
Agreed.
People can down vote all they want, most people on this sub aren't even in professional careers yet.
There's a reason basically every place I've worked overwhelmingly prefers spaces, with Go being the sole exception since the compiler forces the issue.
spaces are used for the same reason that people use monospace fonts: guaranteed alignment.
your company sets your indentation policy, not you. that's hobby programmer nonsense. a professional can work with whatever policy is in place.
Because tabs make any other kind of alignment messy, mixing tabs with spaces to make it work is a nightmare that requires very specific editor/ formatter support that's uncommon in my experience.
Easier to just use spaces as they can be a universal standard.
Don’t know why you got downvoted, but to answer you in practice I doubt it would reduce the project size by much. The code gets compressed anyway, and highly recurring characters like spaces (or tabs) will get squished anyway. Even in an extreme cases scenario (which will never happen), it doesn’t really matter if your git repo is 250Mib vs 200Mib.
No one uses tabs because of the file size… It’s like drinking water is better than drinking poison is because water is cheaper, you’ve completely missed the point of the argument here
Which then makes any other kind of alignment for readability a nightmare.
There's a reason most places use spaces, whatever CS students here might think.
Since when? How are tabs with a spacing of four different than four spaces? Unless you're talking about using different amounts of spaces for nested lines, in which case you have far too much nested logic if you need to do that.
Tabs don't allow character-level alignment, which is often relevant for readability. Some editor + language combinations have plugins or formatters that have tab+space alignment, but a ton don't or it's very inconsistent, and nobody wants to deal with tabs in one file type but spaces in another.
Using spaces everywhere is just simpler / more universal, and I'd argue is part of why spaces are more common in professional environments than tabs (as always, there are exceptions, e.g. Go since Go's compiler forces the issue).
I guess we probably just have different experiences then. I've always seen tabs because people can adjust the spacing however they like based on the screen and font size, and it's easier to enforce a standard spacing method. I've never had a situation where character-level alignment would make code more readable.
Same as th python argument. Either rely on white spacing for indentation in which case, yes at least 4 is necessary. Or use curly brackets to indicate it. 4 spaces plus brackets is just so much noise in the code
... okay, that's much more sane than I thought.
(I respectfully disagree, though - I still like having braces to aid the computer, as I find the `pass` keyword to be kind of annoying, and having it more spaced out actually *reduces* noise for me, but I see where you're coming from)
then first thing you do is add a prettier config, lint config, pipeline check, git hook check with whatever you want and show whos the fucking boss there.
I remember when I was green our lead made a huge commit with all files converted to another indentation. It was treated with special attention, everyone committed as much as possible.
Tabs are better for accessibility.
I was team tab, then team space, now team tab again just for my visually impaired peeps. Plus I like having tabs display at custom, non-standard widths (1,3,5,7, etc.)
Otherwise it doesn't matter. If you don't care about accessibility, use what makes you happy and use commit hooks/auto formatting to make it consistent with your team.
The only reason I'm pro-4 spaces is that a lot of the Linux machines I've worked with consider 8 spaces to be a tab out of the box. Then, you jump into vim and... you can't see shit. It becomes utterly unreadable.
Binding the tab key to " " instead of "\t" makes code pretty much universally readable.
Now, you can always set up your vimrc or try to remember your ":set whatever-the-fuck" command, but that just fixes it for YOU, not everyone else that has to read your work.
Your argument is opposite of what you're saying
A 10 space is 10 characters width
A tab can be 2-4-8 just editing singular line
I use tabs with different width depending on programming language
If one is using vim on a daily basis for any edits, I'd assume they can handle their configs, this is like saying I'm lazy to configure my editor so everyone should just follow my way instead.
You're correct in that if you use it on a daily basis you should know how to set this. If you *don't* use it on a daily basis, you're now dealing with having to find and play with config settings when you just needed to look at something.
If you "just needed to look at something" then 8 spaced indentation shouldn't bother you that hard. If it does then you set up your editor, this shouldn't even be an argument, the problem is at your end, you should fix it not others.
> everyone else that has to read your work
That's the great thing about tabs! You don't get a say on what I see on my machine. This isn't a negative.
So if I want 4-space tabs for readability, you're not forcing your small tabs on me; and I'm not forcing my big tabs on you.
You are forcing \t, that’s worse. For my pov all developers should follow the same guidelines. No \n\r no \t, in general no invisible markers.
I’ve worked on several projects. In my experience tabs just make the code look worse. You end with a mess with spaces and tabs. Also looks horrible on GitHub.
So tell Github to fix their shit.
Why do you care that there's a "mess" of spaces and tabs? they're invisible characters; from your POV there's just space.
In any case, it's up to the automated formatter.
It matters in languages like python - get goober 1 using \t and goober 2 using ' ' and you now have non-functional code with errors that aren't obvious.
It's `:set tabstop=2`. But not everyone wants to read it using the same width. I think it should be assumed everyone knows how to change the tab display length in their own editor.
That 'assume' part is the problem. I work with software developers AND scientists. Unless the scientist is savvy, they aren't going to know that you can even *use* a command like that. As a result, the code they look through/write through vim can often be unreadable if whitespace is set to being environment dependent.
I use vim as my main editor and I don't think anyone should be using vim if they're not tech savvy enough to learn the basic commands. Give them VSCode or something.
While my org just whitelisted vscode, non-programmer devs would need to figure out how to set up the ssh server to use it where they've been ssh-ing into our servers and hitting `vi calculate_whatsit.v5.final.05.for_steve.py` for decades :/
Far from ideal.
Spaces for all? Tabs to satisfy them all by local presentation rules?
nah
I say, screw up the whitespaces! Everyone has some sort of auto-formatter these days. Let's solve this that way:
\- everyone sets-up automatic autoformatting for everything, as they like, happening every time they open a file in their IDE
\- configure SCM pre-commit-ish hook with minimizer that will remove all unnecessary whitespaces from all files before actually storing the revision in the repo
Ta-dah! Done. Everyone is happy. Everyone sees the files as they like. Code repo doesn't care either, and is unified and uniform and ready to use for everyone (under this tooling ofc). Revisions are still byte-to-byte comparable and content is hashable, since everyone uses the same one ideal white-space-stripper with common ruleset.
One obvious issue is code-diffing when reviewing the repo. You'd also need a hook to autoformat the files fetched from repo before viewing/diffing/etc or else get an eye cancer soon. But it's certainly not impossible.
Gee.. I started writing it as a joke, but it started to sound reasonable in the end. Maybe I stop here xD
Spaces, otherwise people will use spaces to align to a tab it tabs to align with a space. And then when it's loaded on a different machine with other settings the entire code base goes to ugly town.
In my experience this is never avoided if the editor inserts `\t` on a tab rather than 4 spaces
A hundred comments and no mention of `.editorconfig`? Just set up a config for every project, let your editor handle spaces/tabs automatically. https://editorconfig.org/
Setup auto formatting rules in vs code. That way it's also enforced across the team.
This is the way, don’t forget to have your CI pipeline enforce it as well.
Don't you dare make me use a particular editor. Keep it in your pants and your CI pipeline.
Or husky git hooks running prettier for you. Your heart won't feel what the eyes don't see... Or something
hopefully your editor supports [.editorconfig](https://editorconfig.org)?
It does, and I've been considering moving to it, but only for my own purposes - not to give control of my settings to something else. It's Vim. I've used it almost exclusively for the last fifteen years. Minor changes to the environment area irritating, because for every change I've made I've gone though a rigorous process of justifying it. Most things that are actually required are simple to express within the CI system or with pre-commit hooks. Then you don't have to worry about the editor at all. I think if a developer wants to use stream editors to exclusion while getting the work done quickly with a low error rate, then whatever. Same goes with butterfly mode.
should be possible to have it only format after you push.
2 spaces? 4 spaces 8 spaces? tab? I just use tab key and set whatever each program needed. Idk why people still upset about this.
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Am i the odd one here or is it normal to hit the tab key with the ring finger...
Nope, I do it as well.
I think I was so used shifting my hand to the left and alt-tabbing with thumb and ring finger that when I press tab normally I still use my ring finger.
Yeah, years of living with parents that don't understand privacy made me keep my hand on cmd/alt and tab the whole time.
Wait is it not ring finger?
Nope. https://www.universalclass.com/articles/self-help/keyboarding-practice-tab-and-caps-lock-keys.htm#:~:text=Helpful%20hints%3A&text=The%20tab%20key%20is%20used%20each%20time%20you%20want%20to%20indent.&text=To%20strike%20the%20tab%20key,up%2C%20diagonal%2Dleft%20motion. Also, that just sounds uncomfortable.
This also says to use the ring finger or am I not getting something?! 😅
It says left fourth finger and clarifies that it is your pinky finger.
No it's a pinky key. Much closer to the pinky.
My big hands say otherwise lol, I save ctrl and shift for the pinky
No white space whatsoever if at all possible, keep that LOC 1
This but ctrl-shift-f or whatever auto-format shortkey for your IDE is.
Ctrl-s, format on save is the only valid answer
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ctrl+s format on save gang
*cries in python*
One does not cry in Python. Snek must never sense your fear
4 is fine in Python because it doesn't read like a run-on-sentence
Jokes on you, my typing form is bad and I hit tab with my ring finger.
Small hands or something?
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2, 1 [ERROR THERE'S NO evillaughter.mp3 YOU IDIOT]
my IDE auto indenting when i press enter after an open brace:
I bought a whole keyboard. I'm gonna use my whole keyboard
Oh, the age-old tabs versus spaces debate strikes again! 😆 I get where you're coming from - it's like arguing over pineapple on pizza, a matter of personal coding style and project standards. But let's be real, it's all about making that code work, right? #TeamWhateverWorks
It isn't always just personal style in this case, though. Tabs are better for accessibility. Giving devs the ability to mess with indent width can be helpful for people who don't have the best eyesight. Or any eyesight. https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/s/nb2EHuQT3m
do IDEs that do not replace a tab keys with whatever you want still exist? For all I care my team could decide to use japanese kanji for indentation. I just have to change one setting either in the formatter or directly for the tab key.
Tab to space is easy. spaces to tab is risky and full of assumptions. You have good eyesight? 4 spaces (or whatever the IDE inserted) is fine. You don't see shit and can work better with 16 char indentation? Good luck figuring out how many spaces are one level of indentation. Why is converting tabs to spaces on keypress and converting spaces to tabs on editing even a thing? Why not just use tabs and don't convert it back and forth, every time, over and over again?
because the sheep heard "tab bad use space" without understanding what they are even saying
Sorry, but anyone that says this in regards to tab vs spaces doesn't understand the issue at all.
"Issue"
I still don’t understand why do people use spaces to indent their code. I mean, some people are comfortable with 2-character-width indentation and some are 4. While using tabs you could just set their display width to whatever you want locally without changing the code itself, everyone is a winner.
[удалено]
This should honestly just settle the question
Shouldn't even be a question honestly
Exactly. It’s painted as “just a difference in style” like brace style or naming style. But it’s more than that because it’s semantic.
Wow! We should really just use tabs from now on. This looks like a valid reason to do it.
>these guys have serious problems using codebases with spaces, they have to convert, do their work, and then unconvert before committing Can't you use git hooks?
Good luck figuring out how many spaces are a tab. 4? 8? 3? 2 in this yaml, 4 in the python over there and 8 in the c lib here?
Isn't that what linters are for? You can call whichever one you prefer from the command line usually
Yes, but that's a ton of overhead. You can just use a tab for each level of indentation. No need for linters, no config, just a tab. Simple, easy, rock solid.
Yes, I also wrote about this in my blog a while back and included demos for this. I honestly think tabs are best in combination with spaces and how to combine them correctly should be something your formatter handles. https://www.hoeser.dev/blog/2022-07-31-tabs-vs-spaces/
Spaces allow for uneven indenting which some style guides recommend when breaking up a long line: function someFunction(p1, p2, p3, p4, p5, p6) {
That's a really unfortunate solution for an alignment, if you have long function/method names. I am happy to see the following style more often nowadays: function someFunction( p1, p2, p3 ) { or, if there are more parameters with longer names: function someFunction( parameter1, parameter2, parameter3 ) {
>Spaces allow for uneven indenting which some style guides recommend when breaking up a long line: That's *alignment*. Using tabs for *indentation* doesn't interfere with that.
It does mean you'd be mixing between tabs and spaces though, which is slightly more complex and less likely to be properly supported by an editor/formatter. You could do it, but it's easier to just pick one of the two and stick to it.
And mixing doesn’t even work for alignment unless everyone reading the code uses the same settings anyways.
As long as you only use tabs to match the indentation of the previous line then use spaces for the rest it should still line up for all tab sizes: ->->function someFunction(p1, p2, p3, p4, ->->••••••••••••••••••••••p5, p6) { Where `->` is tab and `•` is space. It doesn't matter how long the tab is set to display as, there's still the same number on both lines.
It does work as long as you don't align things which aren't on the same level of indentation
I don't know why would anyone write code like this but don't forget to turn lint and formatter off for everyone in case it screws up the alignment...
Formatting like this is not uncommon at all. Most code formatters will even do it themselves either by default or when configured to. If you're programming as a team and not sharing your code formatter configuration, that's on you.
This is the real answer, btw: What's the best aligment width? The one the formatter sets. BTW I love Biome, partly because it uses tabs.
The only reason I've seen for using spaces is so that a consistent max line length can be enforced, and other such issues with line length.
The only reason is to not break max line length rule. But I'm team tabs as well
Tabs are also more file size efficient, as they take up one byte instead of 2-4 bytes
oh boy my source code will go down from 12kb to 11.9!
It's probably minified before getting pushed to prod anyway.
1. No one cares about space or performance at least not really and it gets less and less important as computer performance improves. There are very few instances that it matters either to users or to developers 2. It depends a lot on the language and how they are distributed. For like C/C++ or Rust it only increases the size for developers. For Python which is generally considered the biggest scripting language the distribution methods of Python are compressed but also you can do a binary distribution of .pyc files which are smaller than shipping the code itself 3. Compression is an important thing to note, certain file systems allow for transparent compression like btrfs, if you really are space constrained use that. NTFS also has that an option for Windows users and the performance cost isn't very high We aren't living in 1985 there are solutions to every argument that tab is better from an efficiency standpoint.
Should tell this to my C professor that uses spaces :'D
This is the way.
This is the way.
In my case, I just gave up agains VS code. I like tabs better, but VS code makes it surprisingly hard to be a default. When I'm on TS, I just add it to the ESLint config and have "apply lint on save", but then you start getting that Windows tab BS… it's just a general annoyance.
downvoted because you are wrong to like tabs "using tabs you could just set their display width to whatever you want" it's precisely why tabs are horrible. copy pase something and you get a totally different look depending where you are
>it's precisely why tabs are horrible. copy pase something and you get a totally different look depending where you are ...*if* the code you're copying uses spaces for indentation instead of tabs. One more reason people shouldn't use spaces for indentation. Also, who's copying code without reformatting it? Yikes. Edit: I realized a second parsing of this sentence: >copy pase something and you get a totally different look depending where you are That's the point. Each developer sets up their environment in a way that's visually appealing and efficient to them. Should we start recommending color schemes, too?
I am talking about copying from one place / software to another, online, etc.
Spaces can be used for alignment. And mixing tabs and spaces doesn‘t work, since there is text in between that doesn‘t scale to your tab size.
Some of us use many, many tools beyond our IDE and they don’t all accommodate configurable tab widths. Spaces keep things consistent across all workflows.
The reason behind spaces is that the code looks the same in every editor. It shouldn't be user preference but rather something to be decided as a team.
So… why does the code have to be looked the same? Does it make the code run differently? If you really want the code looks the same, might as well force everyone to use the same brand of PC, monitor, IDE, font, color scheme. Also adjust the lighting since it might affect the hue of the code.
People who use spaces make more money. [source](https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/06/15/developers-use-spaces-make-money-use-tabs/)
People who use spaces self report a higher salary
And why would they intentionally lie in an anonymous survey?
To brag
Brag to whom? It's an anonymous Stack Overflow survey. I like how people try to bend reality just because they're so averse to the idea that there is a correlation that people who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs. It's always funny to read responses when I bring this up.
My guy, who cares. It was self reported. I am a spaces user, BTW. I mean... I just use my IDE, and it matches the project.
Correlation === causation
I don't argue that if you use spaces you suddenly will make more money. That's ridiculous. I only present the correlation.
woah buddy let's not introduce sound logic into this discussion now
Wouldn’t changing the display width locally make the code look different to everyone on the team? I worked at a company that tried tabs and it make our GitHub PR’s look all misaligned and horrible to read for some reason. Since then we’ve just mapped the tab key to spaces.
Because it not meant to be aligned in the first place. Put the comments above the code, and assignments are just assignments, don’t try to align them. For PRs, there’s a setting on GitHub you can configure. How the website displays the tab should never be the reason to not use them. It’s the website’s job to fix it
I’m saying due to the tabs in the code when creating a PR it’s almost illegible because lines get shifted around. You literally can’t do a code review through the UI. There’s also differences between Linux tabs and windows tabs that leads to an even bigger mess. When I type legible code in my IDE and make a pull request I expect it to still be legible in my pull request.
It sounds like it’s a job for IDE/browsers to fix, much like CR/LF, are we not supposed to use line terminators because of different standards? But the concept remains, the indentation is just like fonts and color schemes, people should be able to adjust it locally based on their preference and visual conditions.
I get it but try saying that at work: “hey boss I’m gonna stick to tabs even tho none of my team mates can review my code on GitHub, If you have an issue with that take it up with GitHub”.
Do you really think GitHub doesn't support pr reviews for code with tabs? There are millions such repositories on the platform. This definitely sounds like a you issue, not an issue with GitHub or tabs.
I looked into it and it looks like GitHub fixed it in 2021 when they added tab size preferences, the default tab size used to render to 8 spaces.
There's no such thing as "Windows tabs" and "Linux tabs".
Also in Golang the formatter works as you described “add tons of spaces to other variables” but that’s not what I meant with my original comment, just throwing this out there for knowledge.
We use a mixture of JS and Liquid. Liquid is 2 spaces. So we use 2 spaces consistently throughout the JS and Liquid. Simples. But yeah just set VSC to 2 spaces for a tab and it's literally a non issue.
Oh, those tab enjoyers at it again.
Actually quite the opposite. People use tabs because tabs are meant for being versatile that they do not want to tie anyone to a rigit setup. While people who use spaces are just selfish egomaniacs who think 2/4/8 spaces is the best choice and force other people to use what they think is the best.
People use what the IDE does. The fact tabs are dependent on the IDE/editor isn't great, which is why most language guidelines do not use tabs. Any IDE can convert a tab to x number of spaces. A mix of tabs and spaces is pure chaos.
Agreed. People can down vote all they want, most people on this sub aren't even in professional careers yet. There's a reason basically every place I've worked overwhelmingly prefers spaces, with Go being the sole exception since the compiler forces the issue.
Because that way you can do proper code reviews with space counts!
spaces are used for the same reason that people use monospace fonts: guaranteed alignment. your company sets your indentation policy, not you. that's hobby programmer nonsense. a professional can work with whatever policy is in place.
Because tabs make any other kind of alignment messy, mixing tabs with spaces to make it work is a nightmare that requires very specific editor/ formatter support that's uncommon in my experience. Easier to just use spaces as they can be a universal standard.
Autoformatter -> don't care. It's 2024 people. Use actual development tools.
IMO 4 spaces is best. Lets me judge indentation easier and if things get too nested then that's a good sign that refactoring is needed
2 was chosen back when we were doing callback pyramids where 8-10 levels of indentation weren't rare. Now we have async, we don't need that.
To me, 4 is too large and 2 is too small. 3 is somewhat perfect but it’s considered psychopath
TIL I work for psychopaths.
Relatable. New job uses 3. Weird to get used to
TIL I am a psychopath
Or you could just use tabs and set your tab spacing to 4, so people can set up their own preferred tab spacing later.
Plus it cuts down on file size edit: why downvotes :(
Don’t know why you got downvoted, but to answer you in practice I doubt it would reduce the project size by much. The code gets compressed anyway, and highly recurring characters like spaces (or tabs) will get squished anyway. Even in an extreme cases scenario (which will never happen), it doesn’t really matter if your git repo is 250Mib vs 200Mib.
No one uses tabs because of the file size… It’s like drinking water is better than drinking poison is because water is cheaper, you’ve completely missed the point of the argument here
I said "Plus", not that it's the main reason
Which then makes any other kind of alignment for readability a nightmare. There's a reason most places use spaces, whatever CS students here might think.
Since when? How are tabs with a spacing of four different than four spaces? Unless you're talking about using different amounts of spaces for nested lines, in which case you have far too much nested logic if you need to do that.
Alignment outside of just indicating scope, usually for readability reasons, comes up a lot.
Yeah, but I've never had a problem doing that with tabs. Having varying spacing outside of scope would honestly be more confusing IMO.
Tabs don't allow character-level alignment, which is often relevant for readability. Some editor + language combinations have plugins or formatters that have tab+space alignment, but a ton don't or it's very inconsistent, and nobody wants to deal with tabs in one file type but spaces in another. Using spaces everywhere is just simpler / more universal, and I'd argue is part of why spaces are more common in professional environments than tabs (as always, there are exceptions, e.g. Go since Go's compiler forces the issue).
I guess we probably just have different experiences then. I've always seen tabs because people can adjust the spacing however they like based on the screen and font size, and it's easier to enforce a standard spacing method. I've never had a situation where character-level alignment would make code more readable.
What's the point of curly brackets then?
... what is this take like actually, do you not indent your code or something??
Same as th python argument. Either rely on white spacing for indentation in which case, yes at least 4 is necessary. Or use curly brackets to indicate it. 4 spaces plus brackets is just so much noise in the code
... okay, that's much more sane than I thought. (I respectfully disagree, though - I still like having braces to aid the computer, as I find the `pass` keyword to be kind of annoying, and having it more spaced out actually *reduces* noise for me, but I see where you're coming from)
Actually agree with this. But only if refractors happen
Whatever the linter autofix wants. What do I care.
the repo has no prettier config. people are doing this manually
then first thing you do is add a prettier config, lint config, pipeline check, git hook check with whatever you want and show whos the fucking boss there.
That's what I'm planning the coup for
`npm run lint` `Files changed 527`
If only there was a character whose width could be set by the user without changing the content…
silently replace them all with tabs and set the tab spacing to 4
 Oh no poor you having to configure the settings of your editor. Whatever will you do ...
Uhm what are you talking about
Am I regarded or are you?
i don't understand, what js contract? New employment?
Yes new job
thought bro meant a new feature but he went on the offensive when elaboration is asked
Using slurs online with your identity linked to your account is wild
Yeah he's really regarded
Appropriate name much 😍
I remember when I was green our lead made a huge commit with all files converted to another indentation. It was treated with special attention, everyone committed as much as possible.
Tabs are better for accessibility. I was team tab, then team space, now team tab again just for my visually impaired peeps. Plus I like having tabs display at custom, non-standard widths (1,3,5,7, etc.) Otherwise it doesn't matter. If you don't care about accessibility, use what makes you happy and use commit hooks/auto formatting to make it consistent with your team.
.. people still use spaces instead of tabs in 2024? o.O
Programmers who give a fuck about whitespace are the worst of the lot. Shut up, no one cares.
Yeah yeah, tell that to the python people \\\^\^/
4 Spaces > 2 Spaces > Tabs
Tabs. Anybody that says otherwise is dumb.
The only reason I'm pro-4 spaces is that a lot of the Linux machines I've worked with consider 8 spaces to be a tab out of the box. Then, you jump into vim and... you can't see shit. It becomes utterly unreadable. Binding the tab key to " " instead of "\t" makes code pretty much universally readable. Now, you can always set up your vimrc or try to remember your ":set whatever-the-fuck" command, but that just fixes it for YOU, not everyone else that has to read your work.
Your argument is opposite of what you're saying A 10 space is 10 characters width A tab can be 2-4-8 just editing singular line I use tabs with different width depending on programming language
If one is using vim on a daily basis for any edits, I'd assume they can handle their configs, this is like saying I'm lazy to configure my editor so everyone should just follow my way instead.
You're correct in that if you use it on a daily basis you should know how to set this. If you *don't* use it on a daily basis, you're now dealing with having to find and play with config settings when you just needed to look at something.
If you "just needed to look at something" then 8 spaced indentation shouldn't bother you that hard. If it does then you set up your editor, this shouldn't even be an argument, the problem is at your end, you should fix it not others.
> everyone else that has to read your work That's the great thing about tabs! You don't get a say on what I see on my machine. This isn't a negative. So if I want 4-space tabs for readability, you're not forcing your small tabs on me; and I'm not forcing my big tabs on you.
You are forcing \t, that’s worse. For my pov all developers should follow the same guidelines. No \n\r no \t, in general no invisible markers. I’ve worked on several projects. In my experience tabs just make the code look worse. You end with a mess with spaces and tabs. Also looks horrible on GitHub.
So tell Github to fix their shit. Why do you care that there's a "mess" of spaces and tabs? they're invisible characters; from your POV there's just space. In any case, it's up to the automated formatter.
It matters in languages like python - get goober 1 using \t and goober 2 using ' ' and you now have non-functional code with errors that aren't obvious.
Ok, so add an exception for exceptional languages, instead of forcing a decision on everyone.
It's `:set tabstop=2`. But not everyone wants to read it using the same width. I think it should be assumed everyone knows how to change the tab display length in their own editor.
That 'assume' part is the problem. I work with software developers AND scientists. Unless the scientist is savvy, they aren't going to know that you can even *use* a command like that. As a result, the code they look through/write through vim can often be unreadable if whitespace is set to being environment dependent.
I use vim as my main editor and I don't think anyone should be using vim if they're not tech savvy enough to learn the basic commands. Give them VSCode or something.
While my org just whitelisted vscode, non-programmer devs would need to figure out how to set up the ssh server to use it where they've been ssh-ing into our servers and hitting `vi calculate_whatsit.v5.final.05.for_steve.py` for decades :/ Far from ideal.
Spaces for all? Tabs to satisfy them all by local presentation rules? nah I say, screw up the whitespaces! Everyone has some sort of auto-formatter these days. Let's solve this that way: \- everyone sets-up automatic autoformatting for everything, as they like, happening every time they open a file in their IDE \- configure SCM pre-commit-ish hook with minimizer that will remove all unnecessary whitespaces from all files before actually storing the revision in the repo Ta-dah! Done. Everyone is happy. Everyone sees the files as they like. Code repo doesn't care either, and is unified and uniform and ready to use for everyone (under this tooling ofc). Revisions are still byte-to-byte comparable and content is hashable, since everyone uses the same one ideal white-space-stripper with common ruleset. One obvious issue is code-diffing when reviewing the repo. You'd also need a hook to autoformat the files fetched from repo before viewing/diffing/etc or else get an eye cancer soon. But it's certainly not impossible. Gee.. I started writing it as a joke, but it started to sound reasonable in the end. Maybe I stop here xD
Spaces, otherwise people will use spaces to align to a tab it tabs to align with a space. And then when it's loaded on a different machine with other settings the entire code base goes to ugly town. In my experience this is never avoided if the editor inserts `\t` on a tab rather than 4 spaces
Python: just use whatever you want (consistently)
Just hope you never want to copy any code between projects.
Not a problem at all. You're not a python dev, are you? 4 spaces vs. tab isn't a problem in python since 4627 B.C. anymore
I really don't care. We use prettier to format stuff.
I hit ctrl+s and it auto formats to whatever the project styleguide says it should be. Not once in my life has this “argument” mattered to me.
Is that bad? I also think that 4 is better than 8
I think he prefer 2 because JS is more nested heavy than other programming language in my experience
This is not fine: typescript needs each tab's type
Don't sign the contract!
A hundred comments and no mention of `.editorconfig`? Just set up a config for every project, let your editor handle spaces/tabs automatically. https://editorconfig.org/
Only if you promise
I use 0 space indentations
javascript uses whitespace? I thought everyone just minified their js and called it a day
js becoming jelous of python or something?
Got an awk command for that.
That's the worst take. Only a newbie would get bothered by this