• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Tabs are literally designed for aligned indentation, and they’re configurable for clientside viewing. There is no excuse for spaces. I don’t care if your goddang function arguments line up once they spill out onto another line. You’ve got deeper problems.

    • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Tabs are designed for tabulation (hence the name), not indentation. The side effect is that a tab’s length changes based on its position in a line, which is terrible for programming. If you use tabs in the Python REPL, it looks like this:

      >>> def frobnicate_all(arr):
      >>>     for item in arr:
      >>>             frobnicate(item)
      
      • spartanatreyu@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        a tab’s length changes based on its position in a line

        What does this even mean? A tab is a tab.

        Tab’s don’t have multiple lengths inside a file, they all have the same length.

        That’s the point of tabs.

        • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          The horizontal tabulation character moves the cursor to the next column which is a multiple of the tabulation length. See the examples here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_key

          At least for me, it renders like this:

          Screenshot of a part of the linked Wikipedia page

          Clearly the whitespace produced by each tab character has a different length.

          • spartanatreyu@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            The horizontal tabulation character moves the cursor to the next column which is a multiple of the tabulation length. See the examples here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_key

            Yes

            Clearly the whitespace produced by each tab character has a different length.

            No, each tab has the same size, the text rendered over the top of the tabs are not the same size.

            Always remember the golden rule: Tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment.