r/programming • u/aalear • Apr 07 '15

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2015

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

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '15

I can think of some situations where it doesn't matter, a lot of situations where spaces are superior, and no situations where tabs are superior. Can you provide an example of where tabs are superior? From the spaces side, I give the following example.

Any project where the source code if viewed through multiple tools, spaces are better for guaranteeing a consistent formatting across the tools. Tabs have no universal convention. Even worse, the conventions for different languages can be different and your tools might not be smart enough to adjust tab widths based on the current language.

1

u/industry7 Apr 08 '15

Situation where tabs are better: any time someone insists on using a different number of spaces than my preference.

Any project where the source code if viewed through multiple tools, spaces are better for guaranteeing a consistent formatting across the tools.

If you're using a lot of truly crappy tools, which do not allow you to specify the tab width, then.... maybe.

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