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400,000 GitHub Repositories, 1 Billion Files, 14TB of Code: Spaces or Tabs? (medium.com)
Here's a debate that refuses to die: given a choice, would you rather use spaces or tabs? An episode of Silicon Valley last season had a bit on this. Now we have more data to analyze people's behavior. A Google developer has looked into 400,000 GitHub repositories -- 1 billion files, 14 terabytes to find that programmers with interest in specific languages do seem to prefer either tabs or spaces. Spoiler alert: space wins, like all the time.
I disagree.
I disagree with the whole debate entirely...
Tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment AFTER indentation... Tabs so that people can choose whatever width they want, but after that width (meant for indentation of blocks) use spaces to align whatever you want...
It really isn't that hard and it pleases everyone.
Python is my go-to scripting language when possible, but it's the one thing about it that bothers me - the anal retentive way it forces you to follow Guido's formatting standards. Yes, there is some choice, but when you figure out that tabs make more sense you become an outcast in the python community.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
That's when it's time to run the code through a formatter an check it in again.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.