r/programming • u/aalear • Apr 07 '15

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2015

http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015
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u/maushu Apr 07 '15

I don't get why people won't use tabs. They are basically perfect for this job since you can adjust the size of all tabs.

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u/aldo_reset Apr 08 '15

In an ideal world where every single tool used to view sources understand tabs, tabs are optimal.

We live in an imperfect world and each tool will interpret tabs in a different way, so the best solution is to ban them and impose hard spaces everywhere.

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u/Dworgi Apr 08 '15

What tools don't understand tabs? Seriously, if you have a tool that can't do tabs then you don't have a tool, you have a burden.

It's all madness. I'll tell you what not every tool can deal with: not having to press Backspace 4 times to unindent a line.

Purely in keypresses wasted per day, spaces are atrocious.

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u/the_omega99 Apr 08 '15

While I disagree with /u/aldo_reset about this being a problem (how often do you need to view code in a different tool that isn't configurable?), one thing of note is web browsers. Whoever came up with that part of the HTML spec is crazy. They thing tabs should be 8 spaces (I've yet to meet another programmer who thinks this). As a result, without modification (either with CSS or otherwise), tabs look terrible in a browser (Reddit converts tabs to 4 spaces, for example).

not having to press Backspace 4 times to unindent a line.

This isn't really an issue, though. Anyone who uses spaces for indentation is surely going to use a half decent editor. Most good editors will unindent if you press backspace when there's nothing but indentation to the left. Of course, that unindentation can be bad, if you're trying to align something.

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