Tabs versus spaces, thoroughly
#align
Tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment
People keep spamming this as if it means anything. Tabs for alignment
is not a thing. We're not going back to that. Throughout this file,
monosyllabic ''tabs'' is shorthand for tabs for indentation and
spaces for alignment.
Oh, and about this:
function-function1(-argument1,
=======>------------argument2,
=======>------------argument3)-{
=======>statement1;
}
Yes, mixing tabs and spaces like this is cursed, but this kind of
alignment is cursed regardless of how it's achieved.
Exception: lisps, see #safe
#ast
Editing abstract syntax trees directly would free us to transend the cursed textual plane
Nah, like plain text.
Always bet on text https://graydon.livejournal.com/196162.html https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html
#auto
Just automate it
This solves the problem, but it doesn't answer the question. Also,
code style should be simple enough that a developer can just type
correctly formatted code.
#custom
Consistency versus customizability
Iñaki Baz Castillo wrote
https://twitter.com/ibc_tw/status/776052508007555076
To be clear: all those using spaces instead of tabs for indentation
are irredeemably wrong.
Let me see your code in the way I like.
Period.
Drew DeVault wrote
https://cmpwn.com/@sir/104615166548400832
@neauoire the other reason which should immediately shut down the
discussion is that tabs are more accessible. If you have a vision
impairment then tabs allow you to customize the display of the
code to read more comfortably.
This argument is best made in this reddit post
https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/c8drjo/nobody_talks_about_the_real_reason_to_use_tabs/
A Hacker News user with a throwaway account wrote this about it
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341654
Not going to get into the details of the argument (there is a
reason tabs vs spaces is considered the prototypical "religious
war"), but I do strongly disagree with the way it was argued, and
I felt the need to comment because I so frequently see this type
of discourse and find it very disheartening. It's what I usually
call the "If you disagree with me you want to kill puppies" (or,
in this case, "if you disagree with me you hate blind people") form
of argument. The author really isn't inviting people to challenge
his thinking with his final sentence - I feel like he's instead
trying to flat out invalidate other opinions by emphasizing how
callous you must be to have them.
#elastic
Elastic tabstops
Great idea, sadly seems kind of unworkable.
EDIT: I've changed my mind on this.
TODO: update.
#filesize
Tabs make for smaller files
The many more meaningful arguments from both sides make this
irrelevant to me.
At worst, people merely type it to grow their pros&cons lists. At
best, people use it as evidence of the superiority of tabs, not
so much as a reason to choose them.
#invisible
Invisible characters are special
https://twitter.com/sysarmy/status/1214517062749609989
https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1258176886422691841
"here is how to correctly mix these invisible characters, a thing
space people literally never have to try to do, it's in the name"
https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1258180312422440960
look it's not hard. tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment,
form feeds between function arguments, soft hyphens between array
elements, paragraph separators between methods. i love to encode
metadata with invisible characters instead of doing programming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En8Ubs2k1O8
It's not about which one is better. It's about which one can we
get rid of. And we can't get rid of spaces.
#monospace
Matters of typography
TODO: set virtualedit=all
On font fallbacks and failures https://macwright.com/2017/11/18/typography-thoughts.html
TODO: rewrite.
#portable Tabs aren't portable
I've heard places that tabs aren't supported everywhere.
TODO: fact check.
#prefix
Prefixability
Lots of pieces of notation consist of inserting characters at the start
of a line like #s for comments, >s for quotes, +s for diffs and so on.
When done to text indented with spaces, the text is reproduced
verbatim a couple of columns to the left. In the case of tabs,
there are lots of edge cases that can make the text look wrong,
and doubly so when you use custom tabstop values such as 4:
function-f(x)-{
===>return-true;
}
//-function-f(x)-{
//->return-x;
//-}
Yeah, not good.
This would not be the case if the convention were prefix-tab instead
of prefix-space, but that would shift things too much to the left
for default values of 8 column tabstops. Also, good luck getting
THAT to catch on.
#safe
Freedom versus safety
Spaces allow for wrong indentation, where bad indentation means
mistakenly putting N±1 space indents in an N space codebase,
or something of the sort. You get the idea. Wrong indentation is
still possible with tabs --if a space slips through-- but likely
way less common.
Counterpoint: freedom over safety. TODO.
#salary
People who indent with [TODO: which one?] make more money
Abuse of statistics and tired, forced meme.
#semantic
Tabs mean indentation
TODO wrote
https://web.archive.org/web/20131209200846/http://derkarl.org/why_to_tabs.html
Tabs are meant to indent, that's exactly what they do, that's
only what they do. They're not meant to format text, to align it
in columns, to put your comments into a regular block.
Xah Lee wrote
http://xahlee.info/UnixResource_dir/writ/tabs_vs_spaces.html
the semantics of tab is what indenting is about, while, using
spaces to align code is a hack.
https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/497668345723101187
Tabs were invented for tabular data. Source code is not tabular,
so check and mate, go indent with spaces.
https://twitter.com/sebmck/status/1261831532496384001
Honestly if you find the accessibility argument weak, and many do,
consider that the tab character is literally for indentation.
Gary Bernhardt @garybernhardt wrote
https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/218026131725623296
> "The accidental lingering aftereffects of typewriters' mechanical
> limitations are integral to the experience of programming."
>
> — Tabs.
TODO:
Who is correct here?
Was the tab key invented before the invention of indenting code?
#support
Every editor supports tabs
Indenting with spaces is not supported in every environment,
to my knowledge there's no way to get an interactive shell to interpret the tab key as a number of spaces.
Ditto some old but important text editors like the original vi.
If you use tabs you need to set up your text editor to know how many spaces an indent level is and insert,
delete and move that many spaces when you're at the start of a line.
(And possibly more things.)
If you use tabs you need none of that,
it solves all of it for you.
You should set it up to let you know if you mix spaces and tabs but space people should do that too,
they just don't need it as bad.
***
#any
Always do this regardless of preference
Get your setup to spot mixed up invisible characters for you.
Relevant git config settings:
[apply]
whitespace = fix
[core]
whitespace = space-before-tab,trailing-space
#spaces
Break glass in case of spaces
How many? To me, 2 spaces is indisputably nowhere near enough
indent to easily scan the structure of code. 4 is workable, but
still not ideal. 8 happens to be the sweet spot.
Regardless, make it easy for developers to comply with your projects
tab length. Editorconfig is overkill but worth it.
EditorConfig https://editorconfig.org/
#tabs
Break glass in case of tabs
TODO
***
Adam Spiers https://adamspiers.org/computing/why_no_tabs.html
Bart Groeneveld https://gitlab.com/BartG95/dot/-/blob/c79d086a6b43dde214efb8352ac20390bce65a0b/editorconfig/.editorconfig#L99
derkarl.org https://web.archive.org/web/20131209200846/http://derkarl.org/why_to_tabs.html
Jamie Zawinsky https://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html
Lea Verou https://lea.verou.me/tag/coding-standards/
Stackexchange thread https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e