Semantically, the TAB character means something like "insert a pseudo-random number of spaces here" with that number often defaulting to some ridiculous value l

Semantically, the TAB character means something like "insert a pseudo-random number of spaces here" with that number often defaulting to some ridiculous value like 8. I keep my programs less than 80 character wide for accessibility purposes but if I use tabs then the width is unpredictable. Also, spaces are universal and trivial whereas the TAB button in many editors has strange behavior.