Tabs are objectively better than spaces
gomakethings.com
Yesterday, I shared some spicy takes. A few were particularly controversial—most notably, that I correct Gif the correct way (with a soft G)—but I also got a lot of emails asking me to elaborate on a few of them. Today, I wanted to talk about how tabs are objectively better than spaces. This won’t take long. Tabs let you define how big you want each indent to be, and spaces do not.
  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    You’re confusing using tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment with using tabs and spaces for indentation. This means each line starts with tabs. Next you optionally have spaces for alignment with previous lines. Then you have content (like code or comments). Because you never have a tab following a space the alignment is never destroyed by adjusting how wide a tabstop is.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        That example is using tabs for both indentation and alignment. The article you linked even says not using tabs for alignment is a solution.

        • Do not use tabs for alignment. In such case given example should look like:
        fun foo x =
--->let val abs = if x > 0
--->              then x
--->              else -x
--->in
--->--->(* ... *)
--->end
        • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
          11·
          2 years ago

          Yes, but keep reading. That strategy is a pain to maintain especially across editors.

          • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            Many styles are difficult to maintain, I’m not saying it is or isn’t. I’m saying that using only spaces for alignment will not let your alignment get messed up with various tabstops settings.