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Developers Who Use Spaces Make More Money Than Those Who Use Tabs (stackoverflow.blog)
An anonymous reader writes: Do you use tabs or spaces for code indentation? This is a bit of a "holy war" among software developers; one that's been the subject of many debates and in-jokes. I use spaces, but I never thought it was particularly important. But today we're releasing the raw data behind the Stack Overflow 2017 Developer Survey, and some analysis suggests this choice matters more than I expected. There were 28,657 survey respondents who provided an answer to tabs versus spaces and who considered themselves a professional developer (as opposed to a student or former programmer). Within this group, 40.7% use tabs and 41.8% use spaces (with 17.5% using both). Of them, 12,426 also provided their salary. Analyzing the data leads us to an interesting conclusion. Coders who use spaces for indentation make more money than ones who use tabs, even if they have the same amount of experience. Indeed, the median developer who uses spaces had a salary of $59,140, while the median tabs developer had a salary of $43,750.
Pied Piper proves it too, that tab loving company is one money losing screwup after another.
"considered themselves a professional developer" ... "with 17.5% using both"
wtf? a professional developer uses both? really?
if and when i find a file that has mixed spaces / tabs, not only that, but 3 spaces instead of 4 then a tab for the fourth character. I slap that dev so fast the dev will try to rewrite git history.
Proof: neither side makes jack-shit as a coder
If the median salary was under $50k, then I'm not sure who they were surveying, but it wasn't professional developers.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Those idiots take four times longer or more to indent their code compared to those of us who use tabs and get home earlier thus working less hours.
#DeleteFacebook
Using spaces increased my earnings by 4x over tabs.
I press tab but the editor inserts whatever the project requires. Did the question account for this?
I'd think that space vs. tab use is highly dependent on which programming language you're using, and I'd also think that language is correlated with earnings, so I highly doubt this conclusion (if they're trying to conclude anything). Correlation is not causation.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Most of the respondents wouldn't have understand the question because they actually use whatever their IDE does.
Modern IDEs format code automatically and use spaces or tabs based on your settings. In addition, the auto formatter automatically adds whitespace when you go into the next line. It is most likely not a real dependency between whitespace and salaries, but it has more to do with which environment they use.
Let's say that using spaces was taught in the 70s, while tabs was taught in the 80s.
Now let's say we ask people for their style and their income. The older programmers that by now make more money will say they use spaces, while the younger programmers will say tabs. This would account for the differences.
In short, this survey isn't providing enough data to control for any factor, and the likelihood that tabs and spaces actually impact the earnings of any programmer is 0.
Also, any programmer that uses spaces is going to Hell (which runs Windows ME on the user machines)
Programmers who use spaces are more likely to lie about how much money they make.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
One space or two after a period?
Sorry wrong crowd :P
(and don't you heathens dare say one)
Using spaces to indent is really kind of an OCD thing to do. There's the time and the counting and then redoing when you change something.
So maybe the real lesson is the OCD programmers make a bit more than non-OCD programmers.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yeah, this is heavily weighted towards S/SE Asia - and the fact that spaces versus tabs actually matters to them may say something.
#DeleteChrome
Considering the average developer salaries were around $50k, they can't be that great. Who is even paying junior developers that little? I can't get a competent developer for under six figures even in the Midwest suburbs.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I'm pretty sure that the actual space (ASCII character 32) is rendered the same width regardless of its placement, even on proportional fonts. Individual characters stand alone in size and rendering, except when ligatures are involved. Some programs will insert a different kind of white space character - like an em or en space, or a second space after a period - but a font does not have anything different to offer when rendering a space between sentences. All you have to do is look at your own original comment to see that the space is the same size.
In Slashdot comments, my double-spacing is rendered in HTML as a single space because HTML only renders one space in a consecutive string of white space. However, I developed that habit out of visual preference - I started typing well after the typewriter era.
It's tabs. Here's why:
1.) Tabs are characters specifically meant for indentation - that is the only reason this character exists.
2.) They use up way less bandwidth. I once cut down an HTML document from my space fanatic buddy from 80kb to 36kb just by converting from spaces to tabs. When 50+% of your bandwidth is used up by whitespace, you're a shit coder. True thing. ... Use spaces on my product and I'll woop your ass.
3.) With tabs everyone can decide on his own how far the indent is. That's how it's meant to be. That's the whole point of the indent character called "tab".
That said, I've given up on trying to explain the above to space junkies - they really don't seem to get it.
Today I usually avoid this discussion and settle for whatever the official standard is for a given programming language and use buildtools that clean up the code form excess whitespace before deployment on the web. For JavaScript that's space-indent with two spaces - really shitty, but I guess they're trying to suck it up to the C-snob crowd, so who am I to think I could stop them. The advantage in going with whatever is the standard for a given PL is that you can use the standard linters and commit hooks as they come and easyly set up your CI and build environment in such a way that it enforces uniformity. If that means only commiting two-space indents, I'll bite the bullet. Especially if I'm the lead and/or responsible for the dev-pipeline.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Three spaces? That's ... odd.
Still, it doesn't matter to me, only to the python parser....
BTW.. Any language that puts requirements on white space (like python) are bad ideas... That stuff when out of style a LONG time before even I started this software engineering thing 25+ years ago and there are good reasons for this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101