Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs • Hacker News Board

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#331

Post by jdmichal » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #292

jinglebells wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally, when another developer looks at the code, their IDE will render the tabs as whatever its set up for, 2 spaces, 4 spaces, etc. In other words, it adds flexibility. This is exactly why I use tabs and the reason which appears to never get cited in the holy wars. People who use spaces want to line up their '=' signs, that's fine, but I don't believe it's my position to enforce the amount of whitespace another…

First, my golden rule is "do whatever the other devs using the repo do" but > People who use spaces want to line up their '=' signs, that's fine To me this feels like it's a good use of spaces as well as tabs. Tabs for indentation, to get your nesting right. Spaces to align things. That way setting your tabs to X spaces works just fine and everything remains nicely aligned. Though I'm not sure how common this is, so…

Get your blasphemous mixing of spaces and tabs out of this holy war!

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#332

Post by notacoward » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #307

rlpb wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when another developer looks at the code, their IDE will render the tabs as whatever its set up for, 2 spaces, 4 spaces, etc. This is an argument I hear often from tab proponents. What it misses out is the downside: my IDE has a certain arrangement on my screen, and I'll either have to invoke horizontal scrolling or I'll have a bunch of wasted space if you are using different size tabs from me. This is far from fle…

> I'll either have to invoke horizontal scrolling or I'll have a bunch of wasted space if you are using different size tabs from me. So change your tab size? That's true if you have a different sized monitor, no matter what the tab size. That's... kind of the point of using tabs. >I've come to the conclusion that the only sensible tab width is 8, since that works everywhere including in tools where it isn't practical…

> So change your tab size?

Then open another file, change the tab size again. Or start setting up macros/extensions/whatever to remember or auto-detect settings. This flexibility to have different developers view the same code with different tab widths comes at a cost. Many of those same developers would rather not keep paying the cost, and would prefer that code written by many people fit in their editor/IDE windows and look consistent without any special settings.

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#333

Post by tom_mellior » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

jinglebells wrote: post #201

redm wrote: post #123

The reason I use tabs is pretty simple. It's faster to move around only using the keyboard. It's also faster if I'm changing code that requires reformatting. Finally, when another developer looks at the code, their IDE will render the tabs as whatever its set up for, 2 spaces, 4 spaces, etc. In other words, it adds flexibility. Brace yourself: I use two spaces after the end of sentences too. [1] I am quite the rebel.…

> Finally, when another developer looks at the code, their IDE will render the tabs as whatever its set up for, 2 spaces, 4 spaces, etc. In other words, it adds flexibility. This is exactly why I use tabs and the reason which appears to never get cited in the holy wars. People who use spaces want to line up their '=' signs, that's fine, but I don't believe it's my position to enforce the amount of whitespace another…

> This is exactly why I use tabs and the reason which appears to never get cited in the holy wars.

I see this cited every time. Unfortunately, it's bogus in practice. Consider:

    print('some long thing',
          further, arguments)

If this is an indented block, you'd have to indent the second line to the correct depth with tabs, then add exactly six spaces for alignment. You have to mix spaces and tabs, which is never good news. Additionally, if you try to actually type in the six spaces, editors might take, say, four of them and group them into a tab. (I have vague memories from a long time ago of Emacs doing this. I might be wrong.)

If you get this wrong in program parts that are by definition invisible, it might look good for you and look really bad for others (i.e., the opposite of the stated goal). In code I see mixing spaces and tabs, the latter tends to be the case.

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#334

Post by woodrowbarlow » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:32 PM UTC

fragsworth wrote: post #267

GavinAnderegg wrote: post #209

I see a few arguments here which suggest people think tab-users might care less about their code and/or their fellow coder. As someone who slightly prefers tabs and abhors mixing of tabs/spaces, I find this frustrating. I generally prefer tabs because I feel that they're more egalitarian: I like 4-space indentation, but don't want to force that on everyone encountering my code. Similarly, I find 2-space indentation v…

I agree with you and kinda wish people would take a combined approach. Tabs are better for indentation preferences. Spaces ensure that everyone sees the same thing, which can help in multi-line situations. So I wish people would avoid this black-and-white discussion. Use tabs for indentation, and spaces for multi-line alignment...

wait, but that defeats the purpose of both, right? if you change the width of your tabs, then the hard-spaced multi-line parts will no longer align.

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#335

Post by lmm » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:32 PM UTC

GavinAnderegg wrote: post #209

I see a few arguments here which suggest people think tab-users might care less about their code and/or their fellow coder. As someone who slightly prefers tabs and abhors mixing of tabs/spaces, I find this frustrating. I generally prefer tabs because I feel that they're more egalitarian: I like 4-space indentation, but don't want to force that on everyone encountering my code. Similarly, I find 2-space indentation v…

I think tab users are naive, misguided idealists rather than people who made a deliberate choice to screw over their fellow devs, sure. Tabs do indeed seem like they ought to be "more egalitarian" as you describe. It just doesn't work out that way in practice; it ends up more exclusionary because you wind up with a codebase that you can only work on if you have particular tabstops set up, rather than one that you can at least edit in any editor.

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#336

Post by chucksmash » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:32 PM UTC

redm wrote: post #123

The reason I use tabs is pretty simple. It's faster to move around only using the keyboard. It's also faster if I'm changing code that requires reformatting. Finally, when another developer looks at the code, their IDE will render the tabs as whatever its set up for, 2 spaces, 4 spaces, etc. In other words, it adds flexibility. Brace yourself: I use two spaces after the end of sentences too. [1] I am quite the rebel.…

To me, moving around faster using only the keyboard is an editor feature.

My experience is with emacs but to go from the left margin to the first non-whitespace character across a vast swath of spaces in auto indent mode, I just press once. I'm sure other editors have something similar.

If you're iterating over the whitespace manually you are doing it the slow way :).

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#337

Post by pmattos » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:32 PM UTC

hwillis wrote: post #234

timhwang21 wrote: post #25

Well, of course. Only companies with fuck-you money can afford the extra bytes spaces take up versus tabs, so it follows logically that they'd pay their developers more.

Palapa money

...if you hit ten spaces you might afford a full Palapa forest ;)

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#338

Post by Qwertious » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:33 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #289

jdc0589 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't think you make hiring decisions based on tabs vs spaces? I actually ask candidates "spaces or tabs?" in every single interview. I don't really care what the response is in regard to the holy war, and it doesn't mean anything on its own, but having SOME thought out response can be a GREAT indicator of how well versed someone is in general. e.g. I'm going to think way more highly of someone that says "tabs, bec…

My answer would be: why are you asking me? Shouldn't I be asking you? Do you have coding standards here? Or is it going to be my job to decide on the coding standards?

Coding standards are what everyone compromises/agrees on. The interview question is about your preference.

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#339

Post by jdc0589 » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #289

jdc0589 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't think you make hiring decisions based on tabs vs spaces? I actually ask candidates "spaces or tabs?" in every single interview. I don't really care what the response is in regard to the holy war, and it doesn't mean anything on its own, but having SOME thought out response can be a GREAT indicator of how well versed someone is in general. e.g. I'm going to think way more highly of someone that says "tabs, bec…

My answer would be: why are you asking me? Shouldn't I be asking you? Do you have coding standards here? Or is it going to be my job to decide on the coding standards?

and you would have missed the point of the question entirely.

Regardless, thats a pretty unnecessarily aggressive response to an interview question; or maybe I'm just reading it that way.

Re: Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs

#340

Post by olau » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 3:35 PM UTC

GavinAnderegg wrote: post #209

I see a few arguments here which suggest people think tab-users might care less about their code and/or their fellow coder. As someone who slightly prefers tabs and abhors mixing of tabs/spaces, I find this frustrating. I generally prefer tabs because I feel that they're more egalitarian: I like 4-space indentation, but don't want to force that on everyone encountering my code. Similarly, I find 2-space indentation v…

You are clearly being thoughtful, but the problem with tabs and mixing them into code is that when multiple people write the code, some spaces are going to slip into that tab heaven, and then indentation will break for someone.

So by choosing tabs, either the file must be consistently formatted with tabs by everyone always, or everyone must look at the code in the same editor configured in the same way always.

I remember reading jwz's rant on this long time ago and not getting it until I had the first what-is-going-on-here moment due to wrong indentation from mixed tabs and spaces. jwz is right. Stop using tabs.