I’ve only ever heard raging between the two, but never why. I’m guessing there were competing languages with different standards, or maybe historic hardware limiting input sets that kicked this debate off or?
Hard tabs are much better as someone who works with an age diverse team where vision issues are a serious issue. Four space tabs are optimal for you but there are other lived experiences.
most things seem to have settled on this, but tabs are so much better for accessibility. programmers with bad vision can have trouble differentiating smaller indentation levels, while some of them just bump the font size up so high that 4 spaces takes up too much screen space. each one can set a tab width that is comfortable for them. https://alexandersandberg.com/articles/default-to-tabs-instead-of-spaces-for-an-accessible-first-environment/ has some good arguments
with a forced formatter and a configured editor there really isn’t any argument for spaces
Figure out if they prefer spaces or tabs, insist on the other.
Please note this won’t work on Pythonistas as they’ve already had their spirit thoroughly broken.
I’ve only ever heard raging between the two, but never why. I’m guessing there were competing languages with different standards, or maybe historic hardware limiting input sets that kicked this debate off or?
A few languages force a decision (usually towards tabs), but otherwise it’s just a question of aesthetics vs. accessibility.
A haiku for you:
Tabs or four spaces
Never a semicolon
Broken in spirit
What if you use tabs for indentations and space for alignment?
It’s alright… but have you considered spaces for indentation and tabs for alignment?
Uh, that would be infuriating to see. (Yes, I can see tabs in KDE Kate)
I feel like this is a debate that doesn’t exist - 4 spaces bound to tab is the only actual answer.
Hard tabs are much better as someone who works with an age diverse team where vision issues are a serious issue. Four space tabs are optimal for you but there are other lived experiences.
most things seem to have settled on this, but tabs are so much better for accessibility. programmers with bad vision can have trouble differentiating smaller indentation levels, while some of them just bump the font size up so high that 4 spaces takes up too much screen space. each one can set a tab width that is comfortable for them. https://alexandersandberg.com/articles/default-to-tabs-instead-of-spaces-for-an-accessible-first-environment/ has some good arguments
with a forced formatter and a configured editor there really isn’t any argument for spaces
For python, see which one they use and secretly replace a single indentation with the other.
Makefiles require tabs. Spaces don’t work. I hate it.