Yay at least this comment section has majority tab lovers!
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
636 points (97.2% liked)
Programmer Humor
20703 readers
632 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Tabs exist specifically for spacing out stops. They're viewer-configurable, avoiding holy wars about 4 or 8 or that one idiot suggesting 3.
I do not give a shit if your seventeen-argument function has the overflow variables line up exactly with the paren. Just put them one step further in.
I just remembered the dumbest argument I've ever suffered about this - someone insisting the "length" of one tab changed, depending on what's before it. As in, is it eight spaces, or seven? Or six! It only goes up to eight spaces! No. It goes one stop. The same way a newline goes one line, and cannot by measured by how many times you'd slap the spacebar to get text to wrap around to the next line.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Spaces are supiror because its easier to text boxes.
I mean where even is the tab on my phone?
Right
here
Edit: til tabs make code blocks in lemmy
Another person who codes on their phone.
I bow to your greatness.
I actually does code a bit in phone(and only codes in phone) and still preffer tabs. Hate it when some editors auto spaceify it. Also you can have tabs on keyboard by installing abother keyboard app
load more comments
(1 replies)
The sole purpose of the tab key is for instructing the editor to insert four spaces.
Cycling through buttons, atl+tab, Ctrl+tab, some other fourth thing.
something something real linux users don't use gui and tab completion
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Team Tab Supremacy Unite!
Hell yeah tabs
Tabs are objectively the better choice as it allows each dev individually to decide tab width in their editors. Spaces in contrast don't allow this same flexibility as they are used for much more than simply indentation, for example you likely put a space after each argument or operator IE func(arg1, arg2) or 1 + 2.
Also, a lot of editors won't unindent on backspace of spaces indentation, so I end up messing up the indentation with a 3/4 indent
Autoformatter should fix that, unless you use python. (but even then they might fix it to the closest proper indentation level)
Yeah you need an auto formatter, which is worse than not needing it. Also yes its terrible in python like languages
Sometimes. I love auto formatting, I spam the shit out of it more than I spam save but it's definitely not perfect. It gets real confused with inconsistent indention like that. Especially with Python it'll fuckup
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(9 replies)
The enlightened among us use spaces for indentation and tabs for alignment.
I know it’s a joke but I prefer the tab option. It’s easy to convert tabs to any particular spacing or code point width. It can also vary, if wanted, based on terminal or editor type.
People with worse eyesight can have a wider indentation while those who choose can opt for something more compact
I agree, tabs are better but I have been using spaces for so long I can't even imagine switching to tabs. also I'd have to reformat all my abandoned projects.
Honestly I always preferred tabs for indentation and spaces for aligning. It doesn't break anyone's experience. And if somebody wants ~~two spaces for~~ a two-space-tab-width for indentation and other people prefer four. That will work just fine.
I hate seeing 2 space indents. Unreadable AF ( to me ). At least this way I can easily work in the same codebase without somebody being annoyed ( except for the crying about the tabs )
Why not tabs for both indentation and alignment? (Actually, I see indentation as just a specific use of alignment.) Word processors have been doing it for decades (and typewriters for over a century!). Surely we can convince our code processors to use user-definable, fixed position tabs instead of relative position "tab = x spaces".
Keeping the [TAB] character in the file then allows everyone the layout they like.
Or has working solo for 40 years fried my brain?
What I mean with tab = x spaces is only visually and not actually ( there will ( obviously) still be a tab character in my preference. Not sure if that was clear.
Because alignment are fixed characters compared to indentation. For indentation the only question is how many characters the next indentation needs to be.
For alignment it is not fixed. As an example of PHP code:
function test(&obj) {
$obj->doSomething()
....->doSomethingElse()
}
The dots would be spaces because in IDEs people generally use a font where every character is equally wide.
If I would tab again instead of spaces it could work out if my tab length display is ( for one or more ) adds up to the width of the variable $obj. If somebody else has a tab width of 2 rather than somebody who has 3. It would only align for one of the two people.
Does make sense? I typed it out after a gym session on my phone.
Additionally. The whole problem is resolved by using spaces for both alignment and indentation. But in the cursor would still jump one space at a time rather than the whole tab ( although there are keyboard shortcuts for jumping words which would jump all of em.
I don't know. Call me old fashioned. I like what I like :/
If I correctly understand what you are saying, you are describing "relative" tabbing, where /t moves a constant distance from the current position. I prefer "stopped" tabs where /t moves to the next tab stop. If my /t doesn't create the spacing/alignment I'm after, I just tab to the next position.
Thus, I would set mine with the first tab position (for indenting) at 1.5 cm and subsequent tab stops at 3, 4, 5, ... cm. That way I'd get perfect alignment with both fixed and proportional fonts.
I'd also set line-wrap or line-continuation to use a hanging indent based on the start position of the line being wrapped or continued.
I'd also set a boundary between code and comments so that lines always wrapped before the boundary and using the comment character at the end of a line would jump to the other side of the boundary with optional leaders (the characters, usually periods that connect the end/beginning of a gap). In an ideal world, I would be able to "hide code", pulling all the inline comments into a "hanging indent" structure with their "parent" comments.
Yes, before the advent of IDE editors and all the fancy intellisense stuff, I used word-processing software for coding. 😀
Correct. The way I'm used to it ( and how I thought the world worked ) is that the IDE gives tab a fixed length or characters. If you set it to 4 it would be the equivalent of 4 spaces or 4 letters or whatever.
If my tab is set to 4 it would take up the width of 4 characters. If I need two indentations I would press tab twice.
If bob then checks out my code and calls me a maniac and sociopath for using indentation and swears by "2", the code would just look more condensed. The alignment would still work out because that's done through spaces.
var user_name = "Bob"
var user_age[tab]= "Bob"
This would align the = for Bob, because it needs two characters to align and that's what his tab width is. It wouldn't align for me because my tab width is 4. So I would.pur two spaces instead of the . That way it is aligned for everybody regardless of their tab width settings.
The way you explain it sounds like how tabs works in MS Word ( or other word processors ).
I don't think I could work like that. I've only ever used IDEs to code ( regardless of how primitive they were back when I started). Interesting take though :D
The way you explain it sounds like how tabs works in MS Word ( or other word processors ).
That is exactly how they work, and after 40 years, I still struggle with the whole "tab as a shortcut for spaces" thing. It's not that I started with word processors, either, just that as soon I started working with them, everything got so much easier for me.
There are some code-specific things that keep me from just going back to a word processor, but I think our code editors are missing some useful features that are found in word processors.
Generally I'm not very preoccupied with it as the IDE just formats it the way I like it on save :D.
If I correctly understand what you are saying
You did not, but he also picked an example that could be conflated with the 4-spaces issue.
They're talking about situations where you might want to align text by a number of spaces that isn't divisible by your tab size. I'll expand on their example:
function test(&obj, &obj2, &a) {
$obj->doSomething()
....->doSomethingElse()
$obj2->doSomething()
.....->doSomethingElse()
$a->doSomething()
..->doSomethingElse()
}
Again, dots are "visible spaces" in this example, and being used to align chained methods with the length of the object name.
Edit: Bear with me while I sort out the difference between my display and the resulting code block. Ok, close enough.
Ok, thanks. I would instead (and prefer to ) do something like this:
function test(&obj, &obj2, &a) {
$obj---->doSomething()
---->--->doSomethingElse()
$obj2--->doSomething()
---->--->doSomethingElse()
$a-->--->doSomething()
---->--->doSomethingElse()
}
In this case, the ">" are showing the tab stops and the "-" the resulting white space. Note how all the calls are lined up. (My preferred alignment style, not necessarily anyone else's.)
Yet another edit: I see that I missed addressing alignment on other than tab boundaries. To me, that's just sinful! 😀
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
I can't imagine it would be difficult for an IDE to scale the width of spaces found at the start of a line, to emulate this same customization while still preserving my sanity as a fervent space-indenter. I've never seen an IDE that does this, but it'd be an interesting compromise.
It's not difficult at all, and many editors and IDEs already support this, making the entire point moot. Just do whatever the style guide says. I'm into PHP and Python so for me it's spaces all the way.
How can it tell the difference between spaces used for indentation and spaces used for alignment, if you use the same character for both?
All parsers ignore a shitload of whitespace already. Just compare unformatted code, COMPLETELY unformatted code, code without character returns, and it'll become obvious how any given language is interpreted around whitespace.
Also fun to see just how infrequent a semicolon is 'actually' needed to tell when the end of a statement is here.
Maybe alignment more for the righthand side of assignments. If you have a block of variables with different name lengths, or within a constructor / function call.
I guess the indention sizer thing knows how the formater works and adjusts accordingly. I can't imagine it would be too much of a problem.
Iirc Jetbrain IDEs has a feature called dynamic tabs/space (or something like that) which uses exclusively tabs until it needs to align something and a tab doesn't fit, so it uses a few spaces instead.
load more comments
(4 replies)