Why are we arguing about this? Isn't what we really want a source code editor that understands the semantics behind the source text? Why waste bytes on tabs and/or spaces when the editor could figure out how to display code based simply on the placement of curly braces?
and
The main problem with using tabs occurs when statements are spread across more than one line (to horizontally align parameters in long function calls, etc.). If someone views the code with a different tab width setting, the horizontal alignment is undone.
One solution is to use tabs for the block indentation, and then use spaces for any additional indentation that is internal to the block. That way, each programmer can have his own preference for how wide each indent level should be, without messing up any of the line-stuff-up readibility efforts.
Fair points. I've seen too many files with, for example, 7 or 9 spaces used accidentally when 8 was the standard to convince me though. It seems the only problem with hard tabs is when non leading whitespace is used to align text, so perhaps we need another way of interpreting hard tabs. Hmm...
I'm admittedly a bit unusual in that I prefer to use a proportional font for my coding. I think that if I'm going to spend all day looking at text it should be as quick and easy to read as possible. Of course, this makes any attempt to line up tables of data or align arguments to functions impossible, but I think that's a price worth paying. I also find that much more text fits on a line, so perhaps this is less of an issue.
My rule then is that the first whitespace on a line (indenting) should be hard tabs and all other whitespace should just be one space (although I wont change multiple spaces in other peoples files). Perhaps one day an editor will be smart enough to line some things up according to context (without inserting extra characters) but I've yet to see anything like that so far (and I'm not sure that such a feature would be desirable).
I've also noted that people who use spaces for indenting tend to have different preferences for how many to use depending on which platform they started coding on. For example coders from a Unix background will typically prefer 8 spaces while Windows users often prefer 4. The use of hard tabs in code makes this a non-issue as they can be converted to the users preferred number of spaces on loading of the file and converted back into tabs upon saving.
I think the consenus at my company is that 2 spaces makes it hard to see the difference between different levels of indentation. Perhaps this was enough to push the coders who prefered hard tabs into abandoning the standard.
Personally I'm also a member of the hard tab faction, and I think it makes good sense to use 1 tab character to represent 1 level of indentation. Users can then make it look and/or behave like as many spaces as they like in their editor. Problems only occur if users use tabs for anything other than indenting.
"Anyone who protests that they like their own style better because they can read it eaiser (while everyone else can't) shouldn't be working for you. Team players are needed."
You know, I used to agree with this. That is, until I joined a company where the (ancient) code standard was to use 2 spaces to indent. As a result of this stupidity many developers use tabs, and the result is that we have 2 different styles.
Also bear in mind the Windows licensing agreements that OEMs have to agree to. Here's an old but very relevant artice: He Who Controls the Bootloader
In the 1998-1999 timeframe, ready to prime the pump with their desktop offering, Be offered BeOS for free to any major computer manufacturer willing to pre-install BeOS on machines alongside Windows. Although few in the Be community ever knew about the discussions, Gassée says that Be was engaged in enthusiastic discussions with Dell, Compaq, Micron, and Hitachi. Taken together, pre-installation arrangements with vendors of this magnitude could have had a major impact on the future of Be and BeOS. But of the four, only Hitachi actually shipped a machine with BeOS pre-installed. The rest apparently backed off after a closer reading of the fine print in their Microsoft Windows License agreements. Hitachi did ship a line of machines (the Flora Prius) with BeOS pre-installed, but made changes to the bootloader -- rendering BeOS invisible to the consumer -- before shipping. Apparently, Hitachi received a little visit from Microsoft just before shipping the Flora Prius, and were reminded of the terms of the license.
The point is that British Telecom had been privatised by Thatcher in 1984, 6 years before he visited the country, so he's complaining about the prices set by a private telco.
15 years ago the UK was run by Margaret Thatcher, so it was hardly a "socialist paradise" - quite the opposite in fact (capitalist dystopia would be closer). She was responsible for privatizing British Telecom (now BT), the state run telecommunications company, so it was a private company that charged you so much when you called the US from a public pay phone.
Also, is KFC not an American company?
Please get your facts straight next time you want to criticize anyone. You come across as a stereotypically ignorant yank.
No, not every country is as religious as you guys in North America seem to be. I live in a progressive northern European country and on the whole we really don't believe in that stuff.
I found this article on the subject: "According to the 2004 Report, the five highest ranked nations in terms of total human development were Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands. All five of these countries are characterized by notably high degrees of organic atheism. Furthermore, of the top 25 nations ranked on the "Human Development Index," all but one country (Ireland) are top-ranking non-belief nations, containing some of the highest percentages of organic atheism on earth. Conversely, of those countries ranked at the bottom of the "Human Development Index" -- the bottom 50 -- all are countries lacking any statistically significant percentages of atheism."
This approach reminds me of the differences between US and EU law when it comes to corporate lobbying/donations. The laws in the EU are much stricter than in the States because, as everone would agree, it's fundamentally undemocratic to allow corporations to have more power than the electorate. The US however says "well, bribary will happen so we may as well be open about it".
It seems that the US is more influenced by the corporations than the EU is, so I suppose the EU has better approach. For obvious resons I suspect it will be hard for the US to ever change this unfortunately.
"If Microsoft has 5% of the wealth, then let's just give them 5% of the Senators."
Umm, last time time I checked the US was supposed to be a democracy. I know corporations have too much lobbying power, but don't you think it would be better to try to reduce this rather than cave in completely?
Indeed - the wikipedia link included the following:
Additionally, in more serious cases, the combination of social impairments and intense interests can lead to peculiar behaviour, such as greeting a stranger by launching into a lengthy monologue about a special interest rather than by saying "hello" and introducing oneself.
Good point. The GPL is more concerned with source than with binaries though and just because a user might have access to the binary it doesn't mean they have access to the source.
Regarding notifying the user of a program that it has been GPLed, the GPL says:
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: --snip-- The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.
If a web application is written using say JBoss (GPLed middleware) there is no technical means that I can see for it to mandate that applications running on it must present licence information to the user. Perhaps JBoss has a command line argument which displays it's GPLed status but that will only be visible to the webmaster.
Interesting point. I think it's very difficult to argue about changes in a programs functionality in a law court. Remember Microsoft vs. DOJ arguing about whether IE was integrated into Windows?
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. I'm used to graphical diff tools, so I'd never thought of this.
:(
So even if someone creates a clever way of interpreting hard tabs, problems will still exist unless someone patches the terminal progs
Ahh, found this link
I liked these posts:
Why are we arguing about this? Isn't what we really want a source code editor that understands the semantics behind the source text? Why waste bytes on tabs and/or spaces when the editor could figure out how to display code based simply on the placement of curly braces?
and
The main problem with using tabs occurs when statements are spread across more than one line (to horizontally align parameters in long function calls, etc.). If someone views the code with a different tab width setting, the horizontal alignment is undone.
One solution is to use tabs for the block indentation, and then use spaces for any additional indentation that is internal to the block. That way, each programmer can have his own preference for how wide each indent level should be, without messing up any of the line-stuff-up readibility efforts.
Fair points. I've seen too many files with, for example, 7 or 9 spaces used accidentally when 8 was the standard to convince me though. It seems the only problem with hard tabs is when non leading whitespace is used to align text, so perhaps we need another way of interpreting hard tabs. Hmm...
I'm admittedly a bit unusual in that I prefer to use a proportional font for my coding. I think that if I'm going to spend all day looking at text it should be as quick and easy to read as possible. Of course, this makes any attempt to line up tables of data or align arguments to functions impossible, but I think that's a price worth paying. I also find that much more text fits on a line, so perhaps this is less of an issue.
My rule then is that the first whitespace on a line (indenting) should be hard tabs and all other whitespace should just be one space (although I wont change multiple spaces in other peoples files). Perhaps one day an editor will be smart enough to line some things up according to context (without inserting extra characters) but I've yet to see anything like that so far (and I'm not sure that such a feature would be desirable).
I've also noted that people who use spaces for indenting tend to have different preferences for how many to use depending on which platform they started coding on. For example coders from a Unix background will typically prefer 8 spaces while Windows users often prefer 4. The use of hard tabs in code makes this a non-issue as they can be converted to the users preferred number of spaces on loading of the file and converted back into tabs upon saving.
I think the consenus at my company is that 2 spaces makes it hard to see the difference between different levels of indentation. Perhaps this was enough to push the coders who prefered hard tabs into abandoning the standard.
Personally I'm also a member of the hard tab faction, and I think it makes good sense to use 1 tab character to represent 1 level of indentation. Users can then make it look and/or behave like as many spaces as they like in their editor. Problems only occur if users use tabs for anything other than indenting.
"Anyone who protests that they like their own style better because they can read it eaiser (while everyone else can't) shouldn't be working for you. Team players are needed."
You know, I used to agree with this. That is, until I joined a company where the (ancient) code standard was to use 2 spaces to indent. As a result of this stupidity many developers use tabs, and the result is that we have 2 different styles.
Also bear in mind the Windows licensing agreements that OEMs have to agree to. Here's an old but very relevant artice: He Who Controls the Bootloader
In the 1998-1999 timeframe, ready to prime the pump with their desktop offering, Be offered BeOS for free to any major computer manufacturer willing to pre-install BeOS on machines alongside Windows. Although few in the Be community ever knew about the discussions, Gassée says that Be was engaged in enthusiastic discussions with Dell, Compaq, Micron, and Hitachi. Taken together, pre-installation arrangements with vendors of this magnitude could have had a major impact on the future of Be and BeOS. But of the four, only Hitachi actually shipped a machine with BeOS pre-installed. The rest apparently backed off after a closer reading of the fine print in their Microsoft Windows License agreements. Hitachi did ship a line of machines (the Flora Prius) with BeOS pre-installed, but made changes to the bootloader -- rendering BeOS invisible to the consumer -- before shipping. Apparently, Hitachi received a little visit from Microsoft just before shipping the Flora Prius, and were reminded of the terms of the license.
The point is that British Telecom had been privatised by Thatcher in 1984, 6 years before he visited the country, so he's complaining about the prices set by a private telco.
15 years ago the UK was run by Margaret Thatcher, so it was hardly a "socialist paradise" - quite the opposite in fact (capitalist dystopia would be closer). She was responsible for privatizing British Telecom (now BT), the state run telecommunications company, so it was a private company that charged you so much when you called the US from a public pay phone.
Also, is KFC not an American company?
Please get your facts straight next time you want to criticize anyone. You come across as a stereotypically ignorant yank.
That depends on how many people who pirate OS X will be willing to buy a Mac...
"Yes America is a little more technically advanced (broadband is more widespread for instance)"
Nope, that's not right - see here
"More Europeans than Americans had a broadband internet connection in the first three months of 2005, according to a new survey."
No, not every country is as religious as you guys in North America seem to be. I live in a progressive northern European country and on the whole we really don't believe in that stuff.
I found this article on the subject:
"According to the 2004 Report, the five highest ranked nations in terms of total human development were Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands. All five of these countries are characterized by notably high degrees of organic atheism. Furthermore, of the top 25 nations ranked on the "Human Development Index," all but one country (Ireland) are top-ranking non-belief nations, containing some of the highest percentages of organic atheism on earth. Conversely, of those countries ranked at the bottom of the "Human Development Index" -- the bottom 50 -- all are countries lacking any statistically significant percentages of atheism."
Thank you so much for that link. This was one of the things that was holding me back from getting an Apple *Book :D
This approach reminds me of the differences between US and EU law when it comes to corporate lobbying/donations. The laws in the EU are much stricter than in the States because, as everone would agree, it's fundamentally undemocratic to allow corporations to have more power than the electorate. The US however says "well, bribary will happen so we may as well be open about it".
It seems that the US is more influenced by the corporations than the EU is, so I suppose the EU has better approach. For obvious resons I suspect it will be hard for the US to ever change this unfortunately.
"If Microsoft has 5% of the wealth, then let's just give them 5% of the Senators."
Umm, last time time I checked the US was supposed to be a democracy. I know corporations have too much lobbying power, but don't you think it would be better to try to reduce this rather than cave in completely?
Apart from the steady decline in the value of the dollar and record levels of national debt you're absolutely right - the US economy is just fine. LOL
The Firefox 1.5 beta seems notably faster, so maybe they're using some of the code from that?
Nah, Microsoft's still worse than SCO - at least SCO's about to go bust!
Strange to hear it compare to This Life. I hope it is though, that series was so cool!
Mod parent up. This is what MS realised with .NET - many languages, one CLT.
A C# JVM bytecode compiler would be nice too...
Indeed - the wikipedia link included the following:
Additionally, in more serious cases, the combination of social impairments and intense interests can lead to peculiar behaviour, such as greeting a stranger by launching into a lengthy monologue about a special interest rather than by saying "hello" and introducing oneself.
Just thought I'd mention that this is nice because it means you can do things like:
if (easyTest() && hardTest())
and hardTest will only be executed if easyTest returns true.
IIRC (and I may not!) I think there is at least one kernel contributor with an email address at microsoft.com
Good point. The GPL is more concerned with source than with binaries though and just because a user might have access to the binary it doesn't mean they have access to the source.
Regarding notifying the user of a program that it has been GPLed, the GPL says:
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:
--snip--
The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.
If a web application is written using say JBoss (GPLed middleware) there is no technical means that I can see for it to mandate that applications running on it must present licence information to the user. Perhaps JBoss has a command line argument which displays it's GPLed status but that will only be visible to the webmaster.
Interesting point. I think it's very difficult to argue about changes in a programs functionality in a law court. Remember Microsoft vs. DOJ arguing about whether IE was integrated into Windows?