Doug.Instance

Tabs ARE Better Than Spaces?

Jan 31, 2019
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For a few years, I've been working with a team that prefers spaces to tabs. More specifically, 2 spaces. I agree that this is a superior visual arrangement and having everyone use it benefits those of us who prefer it, those who don't care, and will eventually bring those who don't like it to see the light. Today, however, for reasons that will be more obvious in future posts, it occurred to me that tabs may actually be superior.

This revelation requires first admitting that this is a preference. You may code on a 32" curved 16:9 or a 20" 4:3 rotated to 3:4 portrait. You could be writing code on a flip phone for all I know. Whether you use tabs or spaces, the desired effect is the same: to provide consistent formatting to make the code easier for you to read.

This leads me to my argument for tabs: Tabs are the democratic choice. Tabs put the details of the implementation in the hands of the consumer. Most modern IDEs allow you to customize your tabs. Want tabs to be 7 spaces? Let your crazy-big-odd-numbered-tab freak flag fly! It's much easier to customize tabs or replace them with spaces than to replace spaces with tabs. So I'm sure this debate will rage on and I will happily continue to use spaces for my code, but for you, my friend, I will give you tabs.