Whose Space Is It Anyways? The Battle of Indents and Whitespace In Code

Chaos Lever Podcast

The contentious debate about tabs vs. spaces in coding, breaking down its historical roots and current implications.

Tabs vs. spaces

This Chaos Lever episode explores the surprisingly intense debate around using tabs and spaces in programming. Ned and Chris cover the historical journey of coding practices from punch cards to modern coding environments. They discuss how seemingly small choices, like whether to use tabs or spaces, have great implications for code readability, maintenance, and even programmers’ salaries.

Links:

• Whereupon I Ramble Hopefully Somewhat Coherently About The Spacing Wars In Computer Files
• Which is, as is true with so very many things, FORTRAN.
• All the way up to 1990, when FORTRAN finally made the formatting optional
• This has been proven by analyses that I choose to support because they totally line up with my already existing beliefs
• An analysis of the data behind Stack Overflow’s 2017 developer survey
• But what google did is kickstart the tabs vs spaces war by including in their formatting requirements this line