Dull Men's Club

I used spaces by convention for many years because my peers did and I didn't have a solid reason not to.

Then I read a post on reddit from a visually impaired man who was lamenting that his dev workflow involved opening a file, changing all the spaces from 2-width to 8-width (I think), doing his edit, and then converting back to 2-width. All because 2 was the convention his peers insisted on and he could not visually distinguish with that indentation level.

I switched to tabs that day, set my editor to represent them as the width of two spaces, and never looked back. It was, and still is, the only objective argument I have ever heard on the topic from either side, and accessibility is important to me.

After several years, using tabs for indentation (followed by spaces for alignment when it makes sense) has never once caused me an issue; and even a slim chance that it may make my code easier for someone else to navigate is good enough for me.

The good reason I've heard is because it's consistent. Tabs can change length depending on what's displaying it (this is both a feature and an issue). Spaces will mostly be consistent.

However, you say the issue is with the tool, and I agree, but in a more complex way. A good tool won't really care which you use. A good tool can interpret them identically and adjust the display to your preference. Bad tools are why people will have a preference for one or the other, and the above is the good argument for (and also against) spaces instead of tabs.

100% Whitespace should not be a funtional element of a language. Let me format it however looks best to me then just end the line with a ;

I loathe YAML (and Python for that matter). Anything that uses whitespace as syntax is a problem. The exception is Whitespace, it gets a pass for being hilarious.

I couldn't agree more with you though - it's a problem with the tool. If it doesn't support tabs that's not my problem, and if the language used whitespace for style instead of syntax everything would still work fine.

The classic programming holy war. As far as code is concerned, just have a formatter for the language, whichever tabs or spaces the formatter uses. I just hit tab and let the formatter decide. I most use Rust and I honestly had to lookup if rustfmt used tabs or spaces because I honestly didn't remember.

As for the YAML part, that's just because YAML sucks

I just forget about it because my editor changes my tabs to spaces so I usually hit the tab key anyway. Would prefer tabs, but it is what it is.

What if... we invented a character with the sole purpose of delimiting indentation?
People could even configure whatever width makes sense to them locally. We could call it fabulations with how fabulous it would be.

Tabs vs Spaces

Who tf is using spaces

No.

Wanting two different white space characters that are indistinguishable from each other, when a single one will do, is stupid.

Also, YAML is stupid, as is every language that chooses to use whitespace as a delimiter (fight me python nerds).

We have a 40+ year old software (still developed, but some stuff never changed). They have the software read tables from space separated files. They trouble is each line has to line up with columns above it, so if you have a long string in one row, you have to go to every single line and space them with empty space to all line up the same.

To make it even worse it was based on 80 character max, so if your column headers are more than 80, you create a second line with more column headers. So row 1 is your columns, row 2 is your next set of columns. Row 3 are spaced entries to line up with row 1. Row 4 are spaced entries to line up with row 2.

And word wrap dosnt work because column rows have a CR after them.

Its a freaking nightmare. This is why tabs are better

I too prefer tabs. It's always been that way. It annoys me when an editor tries to be smart with spaces, and insert auto indentation instead of an actual tab character. It annoys me even more when I press the tab key, and the editor interprets that as "I guess that means you want spaces.".

I will concede that tabs can be a bit too wide when you end up nesting a bunch of stuff, so I'm fine with them being displayed as a set of spaces, but when I hit tab, I want an actual tab character. Otherwise I would use the spacebar.

Tabs for indentation / Spaces for alignment

tabs have never been a consistant thing. its basically just a certain amount of spaces. I can totally see why tabs would not be used.

The kind of coding I do is amateur hour at best and I use tabs instead of spaces

It's neater and (for the kinds of stuff I do) works

Also makes finding my errors easier