I’d imagine it’s because people who use spaces are either further in their career in average (because the modern programming ecosystem in general uses tabs so new devs are more likely to only know that) or they’re just more serious about software development because the kind of person to die on that hill is also the kind of person who is very obsessive about other things as well.
Wait. Are tabs used more often in modern stuff? Almost everything I use does spaces and I’m not that new to programming. Been doing it for maybe 5 years. I use spaces in everything but Go.
Most text editors people use (like VSCode) generally automatically adjust tabs to be whatever the standard indent is for the project (and convert to spaces if it’s necessary). As a result, indenting with tabs usually just works, and so most people just learn to do it that way. Also people are used to using tabs for indent from things like Word which they used before learning to write code. As a result, I’ve noticed most people use the tab key (even if their not technically “using tabs” every time they do it).
I think the deeper generational thing is in the idea that anything “just works”. Like I’m a programmer, right, so I know shortcuts. Ctrl+S saves the file, simple right?
Me when I want to save a file: Ctrl+SSSS. Why? Because I don’t trust it “just works”. Same reason I don’t trust auto save. Same reason I am stunned every time I tell windows to diagnose and fix the network problem and then it actually does.
I grew up in a time where you couldn’t trust any of that shit.
I’d imagine it’s because people who use spaces are either further in their career in average (because the modern programming ecosystem in general uses tabs so new devs are more likely to only know that) or they’re just more serious about software development because the kind of person to die on that hill is also the kind of person who is very obsessive about other things as well.
Wait. Are tabs used more often in modern stuff? Almost everything I use does spaces and I’m not that new to programming. Been doing it for maybe 5 years. I use spaces in everything but Go.
Most text editors people use (like VSCode) generally automatically adjust tabs to be whatever the standard indent is for the project (and convert to spaces if it’s necessary). As a result, indenting with tabs usually just works, and so most people just learn to do it that way. Also people are used to using tabs for indent from things like Word which they used before learning to write code. As a result, I’ve noticed most people use the tab key (even if their not technically “using tabs” every time they do it).
I think the deeper generational thing is in the idea that anything “just works”. Like I’m a programmer, right, so I know shortcuts. Ctrl+S saves the file, simple right?
Me when I want to save a file: Ctrl+SSSS. Why? Because I don’t trust it “just works”. Same reason I don’t trust auto save. Same reason I am stunned every time I tell windows to diagnose and fix the network problem and then it actually does.
I grew up in a time where you couldn’t trust any of that shit.
I generally trust things that “just work” so long as I know why and under what conditions.
Yeah, I have my tab key set up to insert spaces. I meant the characters being used, not the key used to write them.
Exactly, and do you think the majority of people who took the survey considered that distinction?