4 ms·

I don't mind opinionated coding style (my Rust integration scripts all enforce that stock "rust clippy" doesn't return any error) and I do think that using tabs

• clarry 7y ago
  > I do think that using tabs for indentation simply doesn't work in practice It has worked just fine for decades for projects with millions of lines of code. It might not work for babby's first patch and how do I configure an IDE??
  • simias 7y ago
    Depends of your definition of "fine". The linux kernel works fine indenting with tabs but it mandates 8-space tabs and a lot of code ends up looking borderline unreadable if you use anything else, meaning that the only thing they get by using tabs is slightly smaller file sizes. Besides if you want to enforce the 80column limit you have to standardize a tab width anyway. It's simply not worth it IMO. The pros are simply too small and inconsequential to justify not using spaces on new projects. Although now that automatic code formaters are becoming ubiquitous it really doesn't matter what you use in your editor I suppose.
• chungus_khan 7y ago
  > including the vast majority of code editors by default Which ones exactly? Not really a problem I've encountered often except when someone tries to mix both spaces and tabs, and in general editors are built with the existence of this very common character in mind. People tend to hit the tab key to indent anyway, and one tab char meaning one level of indent is perfectly intuitive and allows users to individually configure how large they want their indents to be.
  • woodrowbarlow 7y ago
    the problem i encounter is when you try to break a long line into multiple lines. if you want to use tabs and align the continuation, you should be mixing spaces and tabs. for example ('-' is tab, '.' is space): --function_with_lots_of_arguments(arg1, arg2, arg3, --................................arg4, arg5, arg6); it can be done, but a lot of editors get it wrong and it requires paying attention to the whitespace. of course, another style would be to just indent the continuation twice, without aligning it. (i personally prefer to align continuations.)
    • Mawr 7y ago
      Some food for thought: https://youtu.be/ZsHMHukIlJY?t=633 https://youtu.be/ZsHMHukIlJY?t=633 For example, this is the best way to define functions with argument lists long enough not to fit on a single line: fn doThing( argument1, argument2, argument3, ) { <code> } Visually clear, doesn't have any spaces/tabs issues, produces minimal diffs when adding/removing/renaming arguments.
      • Stratoscope 7y ago
        Very interesting talk! Thanks for the reference. More food for thought: The style in your example is more consistent with the way nearly every programmer formats code that has more than one statement. For example: if( shouldDoThings ) { doOneThing(); doAnotherThing(); doLastThing(); } Why do we want to format statements that way, but function calls and expressions a different way? No one would write this: if (shouldDoThings) {doOneThing(); doAnotherThing(); doLastThing();} I have a theory about that but will have to save it for another day. Somewhat related, the Rust coding style guidelines used to follow a heavily column-aligned style, but changed to indentation-only a year or two ago. I posted an example from the Servo source code with the old and new formats here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18962177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18962177
  • simias 7y ago
    Many editors (including the venerable Vim and Emacs) indent and align with tabs by default, which means that if you want your code to look right you standardize tab width which in turn removes one of the only (meager) advantages tabs have over spaces: configuring the indentation width to match your personal taste. >Not really a problem I've encountered often except when someone tries to mix both spaces and tabs Mixing spaces and tab for indentation and alignment is how it should be done if you want things to remain aligned when you change the tab width.
• deleted 7y ago
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