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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

#551

Post by pera »

city41 wrote: post #539
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 point of using spaces is to not worry about any of this. You need a specific fix for less, another specific fix for other diff tools, etc etc. With spaces, everything just works.

I don't see it as a "fix" but as a configuration. And tabs also just works, if you accept the defaults that are given to you :) but if you don't, then you can change your settings (which is trivial). With spaces you have no option but accept whatever is given to you.

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

#552

Post by Stratoscope »

z3t4 wrote: post #540
tom_mellior wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ne…

I wonder how much time have been wasted trying to make margins and columns look good with a proportional (non-monospace) font ...

Almost certainly none at all. Those of us who use proportional fonts simply don't try to do column alignment, because it would be a fool's errand.

In most situations, I consider column alignment to be detrimental to code maintainability. I actually stopped using it long before I switched to a proportional font.

When I later got curious about trying different fonts, I discovered to my surprise that the code looked just the same in a proportional font as it did in a monospaced font.

Regarding margins, if you mean indentation, that works the same in a proportional or monospaced font. The only thing that doesn't work well is the popular two-space indents. That ends up with very little visible indentation in a proportional font.

But to my eyes, two spaces isn't enough in a monospaced font either. It's just not enough spacing for me to see the code structure clearly. Four-space indents solve this problem; tabs solve it even better. When you use tabs, you don't have to argue about how many spaces to use.

I think these are related. Why do people want to use two-space indents? I believe it is often because their lines of code are getting too long. Why are the lines getting too long? Often that is because of the use of column alignment, especially with function arguments and the like.

If you stop using column alignment, your lines will naturally be shorter, and there is less reason to try to save horizontal space with narrow indents.

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

#553

Post by Dylan16807 »

shangxiao wrote: post #114
dmix wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much an unwritten rule that a sarcastic joke on the internet with sufficient exposure will get a response by someone who didn't get it. Using /s really kills the fun (and whole point) of using sarcasm so it's a trade off to accept these comments will happen. I'm impartial to downvoting as to reply literally doesn't usually add to the conversation, which is generally the point of downvoting. Losing karma s…

Known as Poe's Law [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Poe's Law is when extreme views seem to self-parody. That's different from someone missing the joke on mundane sarcasm.

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

#554

Post by mikejmoffitt »

tom_mellior wrote: post #333
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…

> 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 ne…

This is an example of where it's absolutely okay to mix tabs and spaces. If it's Python, that's not going to work, but depending on one's preferences and opinions that can be seen as a defect of the language, not the formatting. In C, C++, Java, Javascript, and nearly every other language, this is a great practice.

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

#555

Post by mikejmoffitt »

kentosi wrote: post #517
blktiger wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean something like this don't you? [tab]void some nice method(int param a, [tab] int param b So long as you only use tabs for indentation, not alignment, tabs look correct on _everyone's_ machine. The real problem with tabs is that (some) people are lazy and do stuff like this: [tab]void some nice method(int param a, [tab][tab][tab][space][space]int param b Personally, I think if you work like that you need to l…

Wait ... you're saying that you should do a tab, and then a whole bunch of spaces? What actual benefit does tabbing even get you at that point?

Respecting indent preferences of others while not breaking the formatting of that line-split function call.

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

#556

Post by fredophile »

uiri wrote: post #467
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> product-oriented companies (i.e. where code is an asset > IT (i.e. where code is liability You got it backwards. In companies that sell code, code is an asset. In companies that sell services code is a necessary evil.

I think you misunderstood him/her. If you're a software developer and you're part of the "IT" department, then you're a liability. Your code is a necessary evil. If you're not part of the "IT" department, then you're working in a product-oriented environment where the company is selling your code (either as a good or as a service) or otherwise making money from the code. In that case, your code is an asset.

I've always understood it as functionality is an asset and code is a liability. The company wants and uses the functionality to make money. Code has to be maintained, has bugs, etc. Your goal should be to provide the required functionality while reducing the costs incurred by your code.

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

#557

Post by jdc0589 »

icc97 wrote: post #505
jdc0589 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rant: a default unconfigured vim instance is a perfect example of my main issue with all this whitespace crap. Personally, I like tabs, but ultimately, like you mentioned, it doesn't matter with a well set up editor. HOWEVER, a default unconfigured instance of vim is not capable of editing, for example, a YAML file in a valid manner without the user knowing that they have to manually set the tab character to spaces o…

Does anyone actually use an unconfigured instance of vim for actual development? I can see for people sshing in, editing a file and getting back out without bothering, but you'd have to be a quite a purist to do all your development in an unconfigured Vim. You can yank and modify existing lines which will keep your YAML spaces. For years I never used Vim to develop full time so never invested the time to setup my vim…

> I can see for people sshing in, editing a file and getting back out without bothering, but you'd have to be a quite a purist to do all your development in an unconfigured Vim.

Thats really the only instance. It's more of a "hey, look at this bullshit I'm pointing out from my fundamentalist high horse" argument than a legitimate one.

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

#558

Post by city41 »

pera wrote: post #551
city41 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of using spaces is to not worry about any of this. You need a specific fix for less, another specific fix for other diff tools, etc etc. With spaces, everything just works.

I don't see it as a "fix" but as a configuration. And tabs also just works, if you accept the defaults that are given to you :) but if you don't, then you can change your settings (which is trivial). With spaces you have no option but accept whatever is given to you.

Something tells me we'll just go back and forth on this. Should we discuss something else? Perhaps vim versus emacs? Windows versus Linux? :)

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

#559

Post by rdiddly »

jar3624 wrote: post #510
problems wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it can start some interesting conversations too - I don't care personally and tend to go with whatever autoformat in the editor uses. My view is that formatting code shouldn't be a human's job, adding linebreaks on long lines, spacing things out to exactly line up, etc is just a waste of my time. That's the computer's job - it should do it based on human readability rules though, clang-format is probably the be…

completely agree with you. and i religiously autoformat my code before i read the code and just before i save the file. However it still amazes me how the majority of developers i work with either have no opinion on the topic or worse think this is a bad idea. some the reasons I've heard was it makes alot of changes to a file causing alot of diffs with previous version making it harder to figure was was actually chan…

Yep if you're going to convert from tabs to spaces or vice versa, please do a check-in/commit consisting only of that change before making any substantive code changes.

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

#560

Post by Stratoscope »

pera wrote: post #509
news_to_me wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure there's a circle of hell specifically for those who mix spaces and tabs. That being said, this problem and problems like it can be solved simply by not aligning things visually: print( 'some long thing', further, arguments ) Strictly adhering to indentation and never alignment can make the code a bit less readable, but conforming to a canonical indentation like this also makes it easier to reindent, m…

> I'm pretty sure there's a circle of hell specifically for those who mix spaces and tabs. Could you please clarify why do you consider "tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment" such a bad practice? I have never read any argument against it. Alignment itself can be done automatically by any editor that supports smart tabs.

It's not that "tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment" is a bad practice, it's that alignment itself is a bad practice. It doesn't help readability, it directly causes overly long lines of code (which pushes people to try to use narrow indentation to compensate), it's something you have to fiddle with every time you refactor a name, and it gives you spurious changes in your VCS diffs. (Yes, you can set any diff program to ignore whitespace changes, but I want to know when whitespace has changed.)
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