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Tabs for indentation, hands down. Every editor out there worth its salt can adjust the tab size the way you want. If you want 1 tab = 2 spaces, you can do that.

Tabs for indentation, hands down. Every editor out there worth its salt can adjust the tab size the way you want. If you want 1 tab = 2 spaces, you can do that. If I want 1 tab = 4 spaces, I can do that. Either way, it's one tab, and we're all happy. It's literally a win/win scenario. I have never understood the argument for spaces for indentation, not when tabs are at our disposal.

webo 11y ago
You just described spaces for indentation. A tab is a special ascii character, which most IDE's replace with spaces if you want to (like you described).
- nerdwaller 11y ago
  I believe you are misunderstanding what they're saying. they are saying you use the special characters and your editor can display it as you please (2char wide or 4char wide). if you literally replace the tab char with N spaces, my editor will now show it as N spaces.
deleted 11y ago
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jheriko 11y ago
> Every editor out there worth its salt can adjust the tab size the way you want this is the one strong argument for tabs that i have heard, over and again. it makes a lot of sense. if this was a real issue i'd fall that side of the argument, since its not i go with the consensus and /prefer/ 4 spaces. in reality though i end up mixing 4 spaces with tabs based on default editor configurations and i what i end up working with. it doesn't cause real world problems. 2 spaces is nice if you work in exceptionally backwards command line environments and have no tab character input mechanism (this is not uncommon, although it /is/ stupid imo). ... now a long time ago i did switch from tabs to spaces, the reason was simple, google code and other web based code viewers would use the standard 5 spaces for a tab, so mixed and matched tabs and spaces looked ugly and ascii art in comments would get broken. i'm not sure thats a real issue any more...
luikore 11y ago
Spaces for the beauty of code foo : ( bar ) | i just want to align this | when writing syntax definitions
- Jemaclus 11y ago
  That's alignment, not indentation. There's a semantic difference there.

webo 11y ago

You just described spaces for indentation. A tab is a special ascii character, which most IDE's replace with spaces if you want to (like you described).

nerdwaller 11y ago
I believe you are misunderstanding what they're saying. they are saying you use the special characters and your editor can display it as you please (2char wide or 4char wide). if you literally replace the tab char with N spaces, my editor will now show it as N spaces.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jheriko 11y ago

> Every editor out there worth its salt can adjust the tab size the way you want this is the one strong argument for tabs that i have heard, over and again. it makes a lot of sense. if this was a real issue i'd fall that side of the argument, since its not i go with the consensus and /prefer/ 4 spaces. in reality though i end up mixing 4 spaces with tabs based on default editor configurations and i what i end up working with. it doesn't cause real world problems. 2 spaces is nice if you work in exceptionally backwards command line environments and have no tab character input mechanism (this is not uncommon, although it /is/ stupid imo). ... now a long time ago i did switch from tabs to spaces, the reason was simple, google code and other web based code viewers would use the standard 5 spaces for a tab, so mixed and matched tabs and spaces looked ugly and ascii art in comments would get broken. i'm not sure thats a real issue any more...

luikore 11y ago

Spaces for the beauty of code foo : ( bar ) | i just want to align this | when writing syntax definitions

Jemaclus 11y ago
That's alignment, not indentation. There's a semantic difference there.