Ask HN: I can't read code indented with 2 spaces: do I need glasses?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685529

by danielstudds • 13 years ago

3 7 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm doing a lot of work in Javascript at the moment, and it seems like most of the world indents using only 2 spaces - which I find really hard to read, particularly (say) long grunt config files, where indentation makes a big difference to meaning. Do I just have much worse eyesight than your average coder, am I using the wrong toolset, or do other people have this problem?

a3n• 13 years ago

Ask your $PROFESSIONAL.

stephenr• 13 years ago

Further proof tabs make more sense.

jyu• 13 years ago

Can't you adjust your given IDE / text editor to accomodate? Look for hints in whitespace sensitive languages like python or coffeescript. For instance, you could use retab in vim.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9104706/how-can-i-convert...

devonbarrett• 13 years ago

Try another color scheme?

But see an optician.

ElongatedTowel• 13 years ago

Just an idea I haven't seen implemented yet:

Tabs have the advantage of beeing of variable width while spaces don't. But two or more consecutive spaces are rarely used for more than just aligning code. In theory the editor could render double the spaces (or rather a space with twice the width) for every amount of spaces higher than one, effectively doubling the indent.

No conversion (retabbing) would have to take place and therefore no hardcoding the value, which often breaks languages which don't like mixed tabs and spaces as the retabber might encounter three consecutive spaces and only convert two of them to a tab if told to do so.

johnbm• 13 years ago

Try changing your font, line/letter spacing, or turning on indentation guidelines. This is mine: http://imgur.com/0BSq6lE

ratboy666• 13 years ago

True geeks should use their own editor. When I ran across 2 space indentation, I also couldn't keep track. So, I implemented a vertical marking bar in the editor, that I could use to "comb" the code. Works beauty, I suspect that implementations of this idea are available for editors like vim as well.

Ask HN: I can't read code indented with 2 spaces: do I need glasses?

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