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

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

#541

Post by Kevguy »

zephyrfalcon wrote: post #412
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…

"""The fact that Python's rule used to be 8 spaces, then got changed to 4 thereby invalidating old code really showed me how shortsighted it is to use a set number of spaces in a whitespace sensitive language.""" When exactly did it use 8 spaces? I have been using Python since 1996 and I don't recall this 8-spaces thing. Almost all code I've seen uses 4 spaces. In any case, it doesn't matter because, as another comme…

I may be misremembering since it has been a long time since I've used it, but I thought at one point Python treated one tab as equivalent to eight spaces.

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

#542

Post by slowmovintarget »

keymone wrote: post #191

wow, clojure is really well-paying language

It is interesting to see that it is a well-paying language, according to that chart, regardless of whether one uses tabs or spaces.

I suspect this has more to do with the sorts of programmers who work with Clojure, though.

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

#544

Post by MediumD »

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.

This is one of the funniest comments I've read on here. This deserves more recognition

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

#545

Post by pera »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #528
pera wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what online diff do you use, but less let you configure the tab stop with the -x option, which is the point of using tabs: being able to chose what's more readable for you.

The only reason 2, 4 or 8 is less "readable" to anyone is because they have a mental breakdown when they see a style they don't prefer and can't get past it. Tab is a variable width character, it has no place in text laid out with fixed-width fonts.

Is having a style preference bad? One can freely configure color scheme and font, so why should indentation be restricted?

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

#546

Post by swift »

scrollaway wrote: post #190
nottorp wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they all boil down to 'someone else, or another IDE that you haven't configured just right, will mess your tabs and make the code hard to read' :) They're fine for solo projects i guess, if you only ever use one editor. Edit: Also, in the long run the best thing you can do to your code is to make it easily readable. You will forget what you did. Not to mention your colleagues that have never seen it. So time…

> So time spent aligning parameters to make code more readable is well spent, if you ask me. How is this[1] more readable than this[2]? [1] https://github.com/HearthSim/python-hslog/blob/5a6ad9a29a7d4... [2] https://gist.github.com/jleclanche/ef40058731061e26d218e2a4c... Let the lines get long enough and the latter is actually quite a bit harder to read; try to follow the variable all the way to its value and you mig…

When I hear "aligning parameters", I think more of the difference between this:

  someFunction(firstParam, secondParam,
    thirdParam, fourthParam);
And this:

  someFunction(firstParam, secondParam,
               thirdParam, fourthParam);
I've always found the second much easier to read, especially when there are multiple levels of nested expressions, and it's a style that has been encouraged on every project I've worked on.

I agree that aligning '=' is actively harmful in the example you give, and that it's harmful in most situations where it's used. I've encountered very rare instances where it's helpful, though. Sometimes you have a sequence of values defined by expressions that follow a pattern:

  enum someEnum {
    FIRST = BASE + MASK & (1
Aligning the expressions can make it more clear what the pattern is and how it differs from value to value:

  enum someEnum {
    FIRST        = BASE + MASK & (1
Often there are other ways to handle the issue, such as hiding the expression behind a macro or a function call; when that's more readable, that's the way to go. But in cases where writing the expression explicitly ends up being more readable, I find alignment to generally be a win in this case.

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

#547

Post by greato »

MediumD wrote: post #544
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.

This is one of the funniest comments I've read on here. This deserves more recognition

This is one of the many unconstructive comments

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

#549

Post by vidarh »

GavinAnderegg wrote: post #422
vidarh wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main reason for preferring spaces is that I have yet to work in any context where tabs occurred where it did not end up with mangled formatting sooner or later. Yes, often because it ended up being mixed with spaces, accidentally or intentionally, but nevertheless it seems to me to end with someone making a mess of it. If everyone used tabs perfectly, I'd be fine with them...

Isn't is also possible for someone to copy/paste something with tabs into space-indented code? Isn't is also possible for someone's editor to start off with tab-based indentation by default instead of space-based and mistakenly add the wrong whitespace to the project? As I've said in other parts of this thread, I'm not that worked up about tabs vs. spaces, and I use spaces most of the time. I just don't find this arg…

A decent editor can be configured to convert those tabs to spaces on paste.

And if you stick to only spaces it is trivial to reject tab containing code in commit hooks. It's harder to reject code that uses spaces wrong in tab-indented code, unless you outlaw spaces for alignment too.

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

#550

Post by mikejmoffitt »

jdc0589 wrote: post #221
austenallred wrote: post #94

Almost certainly a result of the spaces cabal and the (often unspoken of) prejudice against tab users. Don't think you make hiring decisions based on tabs vs spaces? Well you're part of the problem, then. I'm building an app to help you easily email your congressperson and ask them to create legislation requiring space/tab equality. This has to stop. Please consider donating to my Patreon.

> 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…

This guy gets it.

Tabs for indent, spaces for formatting within. No need to push your tab size standards on the next person to edit your code, and no need to force their editor to retab it to their preference, and back again when it's saved.

"It's the editor's default", or worse, "I never really thought about it" are horrible reasons for doing anything, and hearing something else might be a sign of a pulse.

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