this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2021
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It makes a difference when you’re working on a large project with lots of people. Even Linux mandates
1 tab = 8 spaces.The only argument i see in favour of tabs is the “i can change the width on my own machine!” which isn’t very convincing if you are working on a team and need to follow conventions every time you commit code. The indentation will keep looking weird on your machine.
Yes so you can choose to follow that convention, but it being adjustable for reading is very useful for reading on different screensizes or with eyesight issues. Why not just set what you want in an editor config?
Well, life is about trade-offs and neither spaces or tabs are perfect in every scenario, but the industry overall prefers spaces over tabs nowadays and the tooling reflects that too. For me personally, as long as a project is consistent in its formatting and developers don't need to fight its tooling, I'm happy with either. We can yak shave all we want (and lots of people are doing that on the internets) but I hope I at least answered your initial question about why people prefer spaces over tabs.
That's fair, you did thank you!