Poll: Spaces or tabs?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5156179

by hboon • 13 years ago

11 53 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

hboon5• 13 years ago

I've never understood what are real good reasons to use spaces if it isn't existing code or there's a style guide recommending it.

Nor why style guides recommend it.

Any one have a good reason?

udp• 13 years ago

At least in C, I like to line things up sometimes:

    void function_with_lots_of_arguments (int arg_a,
                                          int arg_b,
                                          int arg_c);

If I was to use tabs and someone had a different tab width to me, they might end up with:

    void function_with_lots_of_arguments (int arg_a,
                                  int arg_b,
                                  int arg_c);

wolfgke2• 13 years ago

In this case you use spaces for the parts that shall be lined up and tabs for the rest. Example:

  class Foo
  {
  \tint bar(int a,
  \t        int b);
  };

markokocic• 13 years ago

That's where one single rule helps: use only tabs for indentation and only spaces for alignment.

dylan-m2• 13 years ago

If you're trying to line things up with tabs, you're doing it wrong. Tabs are for indentation. Lining up columns is not indenting. (I'd also argue that trying to line stuff up like that is, nine times out of ten, doing it wrong: it inevitably leads to an if statement where the consequent is indented as much as the last line of conditions. If people are swearing by a style guide that says "always do this," and it's that, at least some of their code will end up being messy anyway).

sp332• 13 years ago

I have vim configured with 4-space tabs, but less(1) on my box uses 8-space tabs. I could reconfigure everything on my box to use 4-space tabs but it's easier to just have vim save tabs as spaces.

If I type with 4-space tabs:

  username    admin
  port        22
  importance  3

And then print it with 8-space tabs:

  username        admin
  port                22
  importance  3

but if I had saved the tabs as spaces, it would still line up.

implicit• 13 years ago

If your team has more than one person in it, you have two choices for indentation:

You can use spaces only, or you can have a random invisible mish-mash of tabs and spaces.

Nobody EVER gets it right, and if you're coding in something whitespace-sensitive, you're in for a wild ride.

countzeroasl• 13 years ago

Less keystrokes = optmal laziness.

lutusp11• 13 years ago

> Less keystrokes ...

(groan)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less

DanBC3• 13 years ago

Did you read the article you linked?

> The comparative less is used with both count and uncount nouns in most informal discourse environments and in most dialects of English, and in these environments, the word fewer is hardly used at all.

> Less has always been used in English with counting nouns. Indeed, the application of the distinction between less and fewer as a rule is a phenomenon originating in the 18th century.

etc etc.

ryanaghdam• 13 years ago

This isn't a valid argument for anyone using a proper text editor -- vi has auto indent, and emacs can autoindent using the tab key.

randomfool• 13 years ago

Less common though is a delete which treats spaces as tabs. I'm sure many do it, but Sublime was the first one I encountered that did it automatically.

lutusp11• 13 years ago

After nearly 40 years' experience in programming, I offer that (as to computer source code) tabs should be outlawed. They are visually indistinguishable from spaces, they are handled differently in each editing environment, and they often result in difficult-to-detect bugs.

A space is a space, one character width (when fixed-pitch fonts are used). A tab, on the other hand, is whatever the editor thinks it is, and a given editor can be made to change how it represents a tab (by default eight character spaces).

The above problems become much more severe in languages and environments that honor whitespace -- examples Python and YAML.

There is no excuse for tabs in modern times. They were originally meant to regularize columns on a mechanical typewriter, then they were meant to save memory when memory was precious. Neither of these justifications (no pun intended) exists any longer.

It's no contest -- eliminate tabs.

hboon5• 13 years ago

I see tab widths being configurable in editors as a major advantage over spaces. No more arguing over how many spaces, just use 1 tab and configure your own tab width, including for Python.

In your experience, can you give an example of recurring bugs related to not being able to distinguish between tabs and spaces?

lutusp11• 13 years ago

> In your experience, can you give an example of recurring bugs related to not being able to distinguish between tabs and spaces?

Sure -- in Python, a mixture of tabs and spaces. This is certain to result in indentation that looks right to the human, but produces perverse results when interpreted by the language.

> I see tab widths being configurable in editors as a major advantage over spaces.

The sole advantage of tabs is that they can be globally replaced by spaces, after which the program can be analyzed and repaired to undo the damage the tabs produced.

Also, did you think about the above remark? If you change the meaning of tabs in the editor, there's no easy way to let the language know what you decided. The outcome is that the editor operates under one assumption, and the language operates under another.

wglb3• 13 years ago

Makefiles.

wglb3• 13 years ago

You know, I was with this right up till golang which uses tabs. So there is one excuse.

So I suggest doing spaces except when writing GO, then use tabs.

mseepgood3• 13 years ago

Ken Thompson and the Go team explain why they prefer tabs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sln-gJaURzk&t=28m55s

petercooper2• 13 years ago

For indentation, I want to type tabs and get spaces.

I suspect many others are in this boat and it could complicate the poll a bit since it's not specified whether we're voting for what we prefer to use on the keyboard versus what we prefer to actually end up in our files..

hboon5• 13 years ago

Thanks. Updated the poll to clarify this.

hboon5• 13 years ago

Why do you want to end up with spaces? Consider the alternative: if you end up with a tab, what's the downside?

drcyrusflame• 13 years ago

Other coders you might be working with on the same project may be using a different editor with different tab-width settings which may lead to improper indentations making it hard to read the code.

lutusp11• 13 years ago

> if you end up with a tab, what's the downside?

The downside is that different environments (and different languages) will interpret the tab differently. Not so for spaces.

This is not usually an issue unless both tabs and spaces are used in the same file, and that was my qualifier.

petercooper2• 13 years ago

Consistency.

Sometimes I might use tab, sometimes I might notice something's off by one and use a space (for right or wrong, habits + muscle memory etc.) I also use code from other developers who may be even more inconsistent or pick one over the other.

If everyone just uses spaces - as in common in the worlds I work in - a lot of the above issues are prevented.

lutusp11• 13 years ago

> For indentation, I want to type tabs and get spaces.

My editor Arachnophilia has the option to generate spaces when the tab key is pressed. I'm sure some other editors work that way too.

nealabq• 13 years ago

Spaces or my thumbs get bored. (Thumbs of the world unite!)

nwmcsween• 13 years ago

Tabs with spaces to align, code indentation is a bunch of tabular data when you think of it.

ollysb• 13 years ago

In languages that don't interpret indentation what is the advantage of using spaces? If you use tabs everyone can choose their preferred level of indentation. If you use spaces what's the advantage?

dylan-m2• 13 years ago

I use a text editor that was made this decade, so I don't really mind either way, as long as you pick _one_ for indenting with! And I don't mean "use the same in all of your files." That's fine, but it's common sense. (And indenting is not the same as lining up columns, so I don't mean that either).

What I'm talking about is that some crazy people think tabs are identical to, and indistinguishable from, spaces; just quicker to type. They'll do evil stuff like mandate a width for the tab character, then alternate tabs and spaces at different levels of indentation. (One indent, 4 spaces; two indents: one tab; three indents, one tab and 4 spaces). If I recall correctly, this is one of the auto-format styles you can choose by default in Eclipse. I have never understood why people do it. I think they're just sadists, or it's a clever way to make code read-only.

I prefer indenting with tabs, but if you're indenting with tabs while requiring a specific tab width - for any reason - you are part of the problem and I wish your code a thousand disk failures.

mseepgood3• 13 years ago

Tabs are the one true way. Their semantics mean 'indentation' and everyone can configure the editor according to his/her preferences.

mikeratcliffe• 13 years ago

I contribute to a lot of open source projects and used to be a fan of tabs but now I hate them.

If one dev uses tabs and another uses spaces then, depending on the tab width they have configured, the files indentation can look completely wacked.

100% spaces for me.

steveax• 13 years ago

I (slightly) prefer tabs because as others have noted, it allows different users to set their preferred indentation. I'm surprised no one has mentioned EditorConfig:

http://editorconfig.org/

dennisgorelik• 13 years ago

Tabs look better in diffs.

exelib• 13 years ago

tabs++, because: 1. I can configure my editor to show one tab as 2 spaces. 2. I use backspace to remove identation and most editors remove just one space and not four.

Personally, I don't see any advantage for spaces and no any disvantage for tabs.

joshka• 13 years ago

Tabs are to programming as God is to Religion: An invisible thing that makes no difference except to those that believe.

Poll: Spaces or tabs?

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