From: Paul Lutus <nospam@...>
Date: 2006-11-15T18:45:08+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby indentantion

Sebastian Reid wrote:

> Which good reason is this?  Are they dramatically more memory intensive?
> 
> It seems to me that tabs would make more sense, since they would
> allow the reader to set their chosen length of indentation in the
> editor.  That way it's two spaces to you, four to someone else, with
> it defaulting to the language custom.

Over time, for better or worse, tabs have come to mean eight spaces in
fixed-point font displays, with little flexibility about it. And spaces
have continued to mean the tautology of one character space. So people have
come around to using blocks of multiple spaces as though they were
adjustable tabs.

The drawbacks are obvious. The advantage is that, if you use spaces, your
intentions will be carried across into many more environments than if you
use tabs in any non-standard way. And eight spaces is just too much.
 
> In any case hitting tab is far too much of a habit to break, whether
> that uses real tabs or fills in a number of actual spaces.

Well, you can always swap the tabs for a chosen number of spaces at the end
of your development work, before publishing your code, just to get along
with the rest of us. :)

> What if 
> you were trying to line up to a four-level nested line on a 4-space
> indented language?  Are you going to hit space 16 times?

No, you use a beautifier to do it for you. Also, must programming editors
repeat the indent of the prior line when you hit Enter, so you don't often
have to space or tab out to the required indentation.

-- 
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com