Dan Stromberg <drsali...@gmail.com> writes: > But I finally acknowledged that some very smart people don't > understand tabs, or don't want to learn how to use them.
One day, you may reach the further realisation that those same very smart people *do* understand tabs, and *do* know how to use them — and nevertheless choose not to put them in source code, for good reasons. > Also, I figured out how to get python files to use spaces and > Makefile's to use tabs, using some slight vim configuration. The makefile syntax is one of the excellent examples of why it's a terrible idea to use tab characters in source code. It's also an excellent example of how a poor design decision (a line beginning with U+0020 SPACE is semantically different from a line beginning with U+0009 CHARACTER TABULATION) can be irrevocable – the syntax can't be changed now, without breaking compatibility for countless makefiles out there already – and cause endless confusion and wasted effort dealing with it. Using a mature, well-customised, language-agnostic programmer's editor does make it much better: Vim and Emacs can both seamlessly handle “tabs are forbidden by default” as a configuration choice, along with “tabs are necessary in make files, using spaces in the wrong place is an error” at the same time. > So I'm using 4 spaces now. > > It's nice not having to ignore the relevant pep8 and pylint warnings > anymore. And I don't miss tabs nearly as much as I thought I would. > In fact, I'm not sure I miss them at all. Hooray! Welcome to the light :-) -- \ “The best ad-libs are rehearsed.” —Graham Kennedy | `\ | _o__) | Ben Finney -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
