Tabs vs Space
Python says this

I never understood the ‚space vs tabs‘ war ...
Tabs can do everything that spaces can plus more:
* look the same as spaces, but its width is configurable (at least in a decent editor)
* the safe space (1 byte vs 3 or 4)
* you can decrease the intendation leven with one bsckspace keypress in every(!) editor.

So the winner can only be tabs? Why would I even limit myself with spaces?

I dont wanna start a flame war, just curious what you guys (especially the spaces lovers) think about it

Spaces vs tabs has kind of become a non-argument for web tech and the former has won (at least in every place I've worked or observed in open source projects).

Although I don't really care (just stick to one for the same codebase) I don't get why spaces won. Given the argument is mostly about how we like to read code individually, and tab width can be configured per editor while space cannot, why did spaces win?

I haven't chimed in on this spaces vs tabs war at all on this platform, mostly because I personally don't care and adapt to my work's/project's conventions, but I just have to put this out there now.

I am honestly so confused about the entire thing since seeing a lot of recent rants on the topic. I was originally conditioned to believe that the majority of devs in the world were FOR spaces over tabs. Thus, whenever I start a project, I default to spaces.

Contrary to that, it seems most devs here (or at least those who enjoy instigating some banter) actually prefer tabs. Now, I recently binged Silicon Valley and can't help but wonder if people around here are simply jumping on that band wagon for the sake of the joke.

Side note: I also thought Vim was more widely used over Emacs but Richard Hendricks asserts otherwise there too.

I know the main arguments for both sides - spaces yield code that looks the same in all editors while tabs produce smaller code. Anybody who argues that spaces are less efficient because you need to physically press the space bar 2/4/8/etc times is just retarded. If soft tabs weren't a thing, I don't think anybody would be on the side of spaces and for that reason I believe that episode in Silicon Valley was just trying to be overdramatized and push peoples' buttons.

All of that being said, I wonder if it's just a generational/field of development thing. Would it be wrong to propose that more older devs in the field of embedded and OS development (using C and the like) are in the spaces party while younger devs perhaps more into application and web dev (Javascript, C#, and shit) are all about tabs? I'm actually fresh out of university, but like I said my preference is spaces, though I don't really care.

I'm actually interested to find out what kind of environments breed these opposing mindsets so what do you guys think?

In the tabs vs spaces debate I'm on the tabs side of things, but I have no problems with spaces.
But if you indent your entire code with 1 space and then indent everything else with 3,5,7... etc. I will hunt and kill you.

Serious question here: why the discourse about spaces vs tabs? Hitting the tab key /once/ is just much more efficient than hitting the space bar /four times/, isn't it?