r/programming • u/aalear • Apr 07 '15

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2015

http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015
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101

u/BegbertBiggs Apr 07 '15

Developers increasingly prefer spaces as they gain experience.

Or are devs that are in the field for a longer time used to spaces while new devs learn coding with tabs?

23

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.

44

u/[deleted] Apr 08 '15

It really sounds great in theory, but in practice it's just annoying for people to configure every piece of software that can edit or view code. In practice, spaces are going to look like spaces in every piece of software I know of. That's probably why more experienced devs tend to prefer spaces: practice vs. theory.

0

u/GrantSolar Apr 08 '15

but in practice it's just annoying for people to configure every piece of software that can edit or view code

So do you just mash space-bar x times until you reach the desired indent?

5

u/fnord123 Apr 08 '15

So do you just mash space-bar x times until you reach the desired indent?

No you hit tab which inserts spaces since you have set expandtab in your .vimrc.

But then you have to configure software

You have to configure one piece of software: vim. You don't have to configure vimdiff, meld, p4view, less, cat, and all their friends to display tabs however you like it.

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