Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I prefer no tabs in source code

adamspiers.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 37 posts

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#21

Post by allenbrunson »

mahmud wrote: post #14

OT: Do you not people see these two twin (troll?) threads posted by the same person? Within the same minute? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058196 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058195 http://i.imgur.com/m1DyR.png Someone went out of his way to find two trivial, but hot-button issues and submitted an argument for each. It's another "experiment".

why would you call this trolling? the submitter's history indicates he is participating here in good faith. and i think the idea of finding two articles espousing diametrically opposed ideas and submitting them both is pretty clever. further, the conversations generated seem to indicate that people here want to talk about this constructively.

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#22

Post by camccann »

gte910h wrote: post #15
nailer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being modded down as that's not a complete sentence, but yes, since there's a standard (PEP 8) stating that spaces are preferable to tabs, and that indentation should be 4 characters, and all modules I've seen use that standard, tabs are indeed looked upon as being bad in Python.

It's not just that. The REASON why tabs are so bad is because it makes very very subtle errors when they get mixed. Additionally, tabs are 8 spaces to the python interpreter. If you're not using 8 space tab stop, you're setting up people who use your code for a world of hurt if they ever change anything in your files.

The REASON why tabs are so bad is because it makes very very subtle errors when they get mixed.

And the reason why spaces are bad is because it makes subtle errors when they get mixed in with tab-indented code. This is an argument for consistency, not for using spaces.

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#23

Post by mahmud »

allenbrunson wrote: post #21
mahmud wrote: post #14

OT: Do you not people see these two twin (troll?) threads posted by the same person? Within the same minute? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058196 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058195 http://i.imgur.com/m1DyR.png Someone went out of his way to find two trivial, but hot-button issues and submitted an argument for each. It's another "experiment".

why would you call this trolling? the submitter's history indicates he is participating here in good faith. and i think the idea of finding two articles espousing diametrically opposed ideas and submitting them both is pretty clever. further, the conversations generated seem to indicate that people here want to talk about this constructively.

It's understood that one thread serves as channel for communication, so a discussion can take place between both sides. A second thread only dilutes the conversation; there are no separate parliament houses for separate party members, they all share one.

If I came across an opposing view, I would typically submit it in a comment/reply, not start a separate thread. And if you look at the topic IDs, they were submitted right after the other (i.e. submitter knew of both sides before hand.)

That, and the triviality of the subject made be suspicious of the submitter's intentions. I didn't mean to be hurtful, but, for crying out loud ..

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#24

Post by allenbrunson »

mahmud wrote: post #23
allenbrunson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would you call this trolling? the submitter's history indicates he is participating here in good faith. and i think the idea of finding two articles espousing diametrically opposed ideas and submitting them both is pretty clever. further, the conversations generated seem to indicate that people here want to talk about this constructively.

It's understood that one thread serves as channel for communication, so a discussion can take place between both sides. A second thread only dilutes the conversation; there are no separate parliament houses for separate party members, they all share one. If I came across an opposing view, I would typically submit it in a comment/reply, not start a separate thread. And if you look at the topic IDs, they were submitted…

here's why i think it's clever.

there are certain evergreen topics here that are always going to lead to heated debate. iphone versus android versus pre, mac versus windows versus linux, rails versus drupal versus php, ruby versus python versus c++ versus perl versus lisp, etc etc etc.

each time an article is posted here that takes a stand one way or the other, it prejudices the resultant discussion. it's sort of inherently understood that, if you want to comment strongly anti-iphone, you better wait until the posted article itself is also anti-iphone, or else you're going to face stiff opposition and downvotes.

by posting two articles, one pro-tab and one anti-tab, the submitter has neatly sidestepped that problem. if news.yc tilted strongly one way or the other, you'd expect one article or the other to get most of the upvotes, and the other one would sink. as it turns out, both articles have been running neck-and-neck for hours. interesting. it shows that tab lovers and haters exist here in equal proportions, which i really wouldn't have guessed.

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#25

Post by miles »

allenbrunson wrote: post #24
mahmud wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's understood that one thread serves as channel for communication, so a discussion can take place between both sides. A second thread only dilutes the conversation; there are no separate parliament houses for separate party members, they all share one. If I came across an opposing view, I would typically submit it in a comment/reply, not start a separate thread. And if you look at the topic IDs, they were submitted…

here's why i think it's clever. there are certain evergreen topics here that are always going to lead to heated debate. iphone versus android versus pre, mac versus windows versus linux, rails versus drupal versus php, ruby versus python versus c++ versus perl versus lisp, etc etc etc. each time an article is posted here that takes a stand one way or the other, it prejudices the resultant discussion. it's sort of inh…

Many thanks, Allen - you summed up (much more clearly and succinctly than I could have) exactly why I submitted the opposing pieces simultaneously.

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#26

Post by plinkplonk »

allenbrunson wrote: post #24
mahmud wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's understood that one thread serves as channel for communication, so a discussion can take place between both sides. A second thread only dilutes the conversation; there are no separate parliament houses for separate party members, they all share one. If I came across an opposing view, I would typically submit it in a comment/reply, not start a separate thread. And if you look at the topic IDs, they were submitted…

here's why i think it's clever. there are certain evergreen topics here that are always going to lead to heated debate. iphone versus android versus pre, mac versus windows versus linux, rails versus drupal versus php, ruby versus python versus c++ versus perl versus lisp, etc etc etc. each time an article is posted here that takes a stand one way or the other, it prejudices the resultant discussion. it's sort of inh…

"each time an article is posted here that takes a stand one way or the other, it prejudices the resultant discussion."

Wouldn't a good thing to do in such a situation be to write an article of one's own summarizing the key points from both the pro and anti arguments, titling it something like "To tab or not to tab" and linking to that instead? That way you don't have to take a stand on a polarizing article but could get the benefit of the HN community's discussion?

HN usually has great discussion even on crummy topics and I can empathize with the intent to tap into such discussion on a subject of interest, but this dual posting (in my purely subjective opinion) has a whiff of deception about it - a "letter of the law" vs "spirit of the law" thing.

"by posting two articles, one pro-tab and one anti-tab, the submitter has neatly sidestepped that problem. "

Yes it is a neat hack. But I also agree with Mahmud in that this seems (somewhat) trollish.(What's next? Pairs of "Lisp is cool/ Lisp sucks" "Ruby is better than Python/Python is better than Ruby" articles? - Good on you for spotting it, Mahmud!)

A trollish hack? Why not?

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#27

Post by mrinterweb »

shin_lao wrote: post #7

Oh yes. Tabs or spaces in source code. That's really what makes software great. Just have guidelines and stick to them. What sucks is inconsistency. Everybody's got an opinion about code layout. It doesn't matter. There's no good or bad layout. Readability is just another word for "looking like stuff I'm used to read".

This is especially true when multiple developers have been editing the same file. Some developers will use tabs some spaces. The end result is code that is completely unreadable and that must be manually re-indented. The developer that uses tabs that is editing a hard space indented file, might not even realize what evil they are introducing to a file. Then the next developer opens the file and screams.

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#28

Post by allenbrunson »

plinkplonk wrote: post #26
allenbrunson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here's why i think it's clever. there are certain evergreen topics here that are always going to lead to heated debate. iphone versus android versus pre, mac versus windows versus linux, rails versus drupal versus php, ruby versus python versus c++ versus perl versus lisp, etc etc etc. each time an article is posted here that takes a stand one way or the other, it prejudices the resultant discussion. it's sort of inh…

"each time an article is posted here that takes a stand one way or the other, it prejudices the resultant discussion." Wouldn't a good thing to do in such a situation be to write an article of one's own summarizing the key points from both the pro and anti arguments, titling it something like "To tab or not to tab" and linking to that instead? That way you don't have to take a stand on a polarizing article but could…

i'm not suggesting that dual posts should become the norm, I'm just noting that this is a clever hack that illustrates a problem in the system. i think it's human nature to prefer a two-horse race where half the viewers root for one and the other half for the other, rather than a one-horse race where half the audience is rooting for, the other half against.

if this hack started becoming common, I'm sure the editors would eventually put a stop to it.

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#29

Post by pbhjpbhj »

forsaken wrote: post #17
shin_lao wrote: post #7

Oh yes. Tabs or spaces in source code. That's really what makes software great. Just have guidelines and stick to them. What sucks is inconsistency. Everybody's got an opinion about code layout. It doesn't matter. There's no good or bad layout. Readability is just another word for "looking like stuff I'm used to read".

What's interesting is that I never used to care how code was indented, never bothered me. However, I got a job using Python/Django, and almost all of the code in that community is in the PEP8 style (4 space indents, etc, http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/ ). Now whenever I read python code that is outside of PEP8 just a little bit, it makes me cringe, but I can still read other, non python code indented almost…

Why don't IDE's just do the conversion on the fly on a per-user basis?

Sure you'd need to know the standard occasionally but can't the code just load with my "stylesheet" and then use tabs. Then when it's saved the code is simply reverted to space delimits. This sort of formatting issue should not be an issue anymore surely?

Re: Why I prefer no tabs in source code

#30

Post by plinkplonk »

allenbrunson wrote: post #28
plinkplonk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"each time an article is posted here that takes a stand one way or the other, it prejudices the resultant discussion." Wouldn't a good thing to do in such a situation be to write an article of one's own summarizing the key points from both the pro and anti arguments, titling it something like "To tab or not to tab" and linking to that instead? That way you don't have to take a stand on a polarizing article but could…

i'm not suggesting that dual posts should become the norm, I'm just noting that this is a clever hack that illustrates a problem in the system. i think it's human nature to prefer a two-horse race where half the viewers root for one and the other half for the other, rather than a one-horse race where half the audience is rooting for, the other half against. if this hack started becoming common, I'm sure the editors w…

"i'm not suggesting that dual posts should become the norm,"

I agree. I wasn't implying you did. Apologies if I gave that impression in my post.

" I'm just noting that this is a clever hack that illustrates a problem in the system."

I agree with this too. It is a clever hack(good) exploiting a hole in the system (ambiguous), intended specifically to provoke argument( bad imo).

Post reply on HN