Tab Characters Proven Illogical

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37562818

by owlstuffing • 3 years ago

2 6 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

In simple terms a tab character is a shortcut that inserts N spaces. N varies by personal preference, by document, by editor. What looks nice with your 8 space tabs may look terrible with my 2 space tabs. Therefore, physically inserting the tab macro into a document that others read/edit is criminal. Q.E.D.

p.s. tab characters are not a substitute for formatting tools, don't be that guy

p.s.s. if humans were smart, they would store source files as the AST and not ASCII scratched onto clay tablets

jjgreen• 3 years ago

For variety, I like a mixture of tabs and spaces.

owlstuffing• 3 years ago

Agreed. I’m also lobbying for a three-character line separator standard.

jauntywundrkind• 3 years ago

What looks nice with your 8 space tabs may look terrible with my 2 space tabs.

Your 2 spaces don't maybe look bad to me, they certainly look illegible to me & awful.

Q.e.d, you are wrong & spaces are immoral.

The risk of things not being ideal is such an awful bludgeon against letting people do things their own way.

marssaxman• 3 years ago

That's an oversimplification; tab characters have variable width, aligning the next character to a column which is N spaces wide.

jdougan• 3 years ago

Look up elastic tabstops for s counterexample.

kjs3• 3 years ago

In simple terms a tab character is a shortcut that inserts N spaces.

So you don't even get the basic premise right. Jump right to the hyperbolic "criminal" (don't be that guy). And end with the "Q.E.D." (don't be that guy).

Tab Characters Proven Illogical

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