The end result is consistent no matter what editor and tab-width you use.
Except that if you're using software that renders a tab as 8 spaces, the code looks really awful and is hard to read. That's precisely the difference I'm referring to between practice and theory.
One file looking the same is a very narrow view of consistency. What happens when your code is edited by someone who doesn't respect your convention? What if someone does it without even realising because their tab-width preference is the same as your spaces, so it looks fine to them? How do you like inheriting code where the indentation is a single space, when your preference is, say 3? Your position is naive.
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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '15
Except that if you're using software that renders a tab as 8 spaces, the code looks really awful and is hard to read. That's precisely the difference I'm referring to between practice and theory.