That's because these programmers are getting paid by the character.

This is also why Java dev pays so well.

I use tabs because I prefer 4-space indents and others might prefer 2-space indentation or the gross and unacceptable 6-space indentation.

If more than one person is working on a code base, there will likely be more than one preference, and with tabs everyone gets to just set their own tab width.

Yes, even the 3-space savages.

Seven semicolons are the correct way to do indentation (it even alliterates):

int main
(void) {
;;;;;;;printf("like this\n"); }

Is this some kind of python meme I'm too C++ to understand?

Now, I'm completely willing to start a war about { going on the next line.

But you get smaller files with Tabs: https://www.madskristensen.net/... ;)

Tabs make more sense because that’s exactly what they’re for, indents. Ignoring how it looks, which makes more semantic sense for an indent, or ? You wouldn’t use a bunch of spaces to indent a paragraph, so why would you use it to indent code?

Is there any actual advantage to using spaces? I have seen similar posts for a while and as a tab user I don't understand why they are any better than just a tab

I'd imagine it's because people who use spaces are either further in their career in average (because the modern programming ecosystem in general uses tabs so new devs are more likely to only know that) or they're just more serious about software development because the kind of person to die on that hill is also the kind of person who is very obsessive about other things as well.

[ ] tabs [ ] spaces [x] why would I even care, I press tab and the editor puts either a tab or a number of spaces, couldn't care less...

I'd assume this is a product of space users being older and thus earning more, but that is wild speculation.

Someone here made a longer explanation in a blog post why it's that way and what this corresponds to: https://evelinag.com/...

For your viewing pleasure. https://youtu.be/SsoOG6ZeyUI

So the two camps are:

spaces: who want to be able to have accidental fractional indentation and so they can force anyone who may read their code in the future to see the indentation at the size that they intended.

tabs: who want consistent bug-resistant and logical formatting, and for any future reader to decided for themselves thier own personal best indentation size.

A possible explanation: people who want it their way at the expense of others are more likely to choose spaces, and are more likely to feel at home at a company that does exactly that in order to extract more profit from thier victi... customers.

Casualty / coincidence

Edit: causality/coincidence

But what about their DTF?

Well, spaces are superior, so…

I have to come in here and comment because I can’t let the slander continue.

You can use either spaces or tabs, both options are viable. There are different reasons to choose each. I am sick and tired of hearing elitism from people thinking they have the objectively correct answer. I’ve been in this debate for a long time and it’s more toxic now than it ever has been. It used to be that each camp fought for the virtues they liked about their choice. Now that accessibility is a mantra of the tab camp, that’s all they talk about and they assert that their values are the only ones that matter - without evidence.

There are plenty of good reasons to use spaces. The biggest of which is if you care about line lengths in any capacity. There are many reasons to care about line lengths.

• Government requirements
  • Believe it or not, some projects still require code to be printed out, and how the code looks printed matters.
• Heavy terminal use
  • Projects where code is frequently accessed though a terminal greatly benefits from a maximum line length.
• Three-way merges
  • If you're ever in a situation where you want to see three versions of the code on a single screen, maximum line length matters.

I'm sure there are more.

If you use tabs, the only way to accommodate a maximum line length is to enforce a particular tab width. Which is almost always better to do by using spaces.

There is a reason almost every language style guide says to use spaces. Go is the only modern language I'm aware of that says tabs. It's mind-boggling to me that people will look at nearly the entire industry and say that they're crazy or malicious or uncaring. That obviously can't be true. The reality is that there are in fact decent reasons to use spaces.

And of course tabs are fine too. If you don't care about strict maximum line length requirements, then there isn't much of a reason to use spaces. There are few other reasons, but they're not very strong. So feel free, use tabs in your company and on your projects.

But drop the elitism where you assert without evidence that because a tiny minority of people have to spend a few hours of their time configuring their special tools to work with spaces the entire industry has to drop all their other values and preferences to save them that time.

Please, do feel free to disparage maximum line lengths, or bloated file sizes, or whatever else. Let the Holy War continue. I'm just sick of people pretending that the debate is over just because they say so.

If I had to venture a guess as to why spaces-users make more money, it's probably just because that's what all the tools are pre-configured for. People that just use the defaults and get going are likely more productive than those who rabidly obsess over something like whitespace. I expect the reverse would be true if tabs were the default. But that's pure speculation, I truly have no idea.

I let the editor handles the formatting, so I make no money