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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   899 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 22, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The thing is that indentation should be tabs. Then everyone can set whatever depth they want their tabs to render as.

That's fair. I do wonder why tabs are so widely hated, given the flexibility like you said.

Because there's usually a rule about maximum line length, in order to keep lines fitting inside the screen or window. Variable-length tabs play havoc with that rule, and auto-formatters would be constantly flipping lines back and forth as code was touched by different developers. Which introduces a lot of extra noise into commits.

Not to mention that sometimes we use tabs to deliberately format things into columns, not just indent code. Variable-length tabs throw that off.

All in all, the gains from having the code look the exact same for each developer outweighs the individual aesthetic gain of your preferred tab size.

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