Re^3: Tabs vs Spaces lets give this a go

[monarch]

Wait a minute.. did you just say "\t" doesn't create any problems???

Call me funny, but in computer science, nay engineering, nay life there's always a price to be paid for every decision. Indenting with spaces does cause problems. Indenting with tabs does cause problems. The important thing is to identify the solution that causes the least additional problems.

In fact, previously in this thread, I posted a very tangible situation in which tabifying caused me much grief.

On another point: if you think programming in variable-width fonts is a good idea then that's okay with me but clearly you are programming in quite a narrow environment. Experience would teach you that monospace is required in many (of course not all) technical situations.

The argument that seems to be continually missed by the pro-tab lobby is one of cross-platform, cross-editor maintainability. Say goodbye to maintainability next time you add tabs to your code. You're making diffs harder, forcing individuals to guess "is that whitespace a tab or several spaces" and causing your code to be displayed differently on a number of different environments.

I could go on and on but really this is something experience has to teach you. The strength with which you are pro-tab has clearly scared some programmers in this thread whose many previous postings on Perlmonks have left me with deep respect.

Remember, a lot of us have been programming since our earliest teenage years. Yes, one can come out of uni with a computer science degree, but this doesn't make one an experienced programmer. When you've worked in multiple environments, multiple languages, multiple teams, different editors, different OSs, different platforms, different bit widths on processors, different source code repositories, you'll start to appreciate why some of us feel the way we do.

[Anonymous Monk]

Indenting with spaces does cause problems. Indenting with tabs does cause problems. The important thing is to identify the solution that causes the least additional problems.

The solution got to be don't indent then...