Religious technical opinions

[Picuino]

It is curious how many technicians think about some banal and almost silly options in a quasi-religious way.

For example I ALWAYS try to program with spaces instead of tabs. It could have been the other way around, but in the end I opted for the spaces and no one will change my mind. Programming with tabs is like a pain for me.




The same thing happens many times with Vi and Emacs, Linux and Windows or other spurious options.
It seems that people's minds are programmed to take sides and we think that it is the only true way of seeing things. That creates endless arguments that seem to go nowhere because both sides are convinced the other is wrong.

That is so and we all assume it for political or religious opinions, but it never ceases to amaze me that it also occurs in things as banal as spaces and tabs.

Regards.

[eugene]

It's hard for me to take the video seriously when they're using Apple computers.

EDIT: 

[NiHaoMike]

I think the preference for tabs over spaces was made popular by web developers, where back in the days, the difference would be a significant improvement in loading speed. Of course, it really began with the first programming language that could accept either tabs or spaces, back when storage was expensive and so every byte added up.

[Siwastaja]

Programming with tabs is like a pain for me.

Right there, you answered your own question without even realizing you asked that question!

If programming with tabs is like pain for you, what happens if you pull a code file from a co worker, written with tabs, and need to work with that file together?

It's pain to you: for technical, actual reasons: the fact you have learned to use spaces, like you learn to ride a bicycle, so tabs really work slower for you. Maybe the text editor of your choice works better with spaces, too.

So it's not a meaningless thing, nor it's a religious thing, but a practical, actual one.

For me, it's the opposite, I want the tabs, but the pain is exactly the same.

Of course, now the big decision part is, are you going to be an asshole and start fighting about it, or accept the different viewpoint, slowing down your workflow, or try to work out some compromise.

Many simply won't want to accept slowing down their work, because they think it is important. While a bit selfish, this is also natural and understandable.

Finally, the deciding factor again is, not religion, but actual engineering question: the choice of text editor and its configuration. It either makes or breaks the usage of spaces or tabs.

So sorry, I don't agree; this isn't a religious technical opinion, but an actual technical one. The fact that personal learning process is part of that technicality, and you could have ended up either way, does not make it religious.

[cgroen]

Programming with tabs is like a pain for me.

Right there, you answered your own question without even realizing you asked that question!

If programming with tabs is like pain for you, what happens if you pull a code file from a co worker, written with tabs, and need to work with that file together?

It's pain to you: for technical, actual reasons: the fact you have learned to use spaces, like you learn to ride a bicycle, so tabs really work slower for you. Maybe the text editor of your choice works better with spaces, too.

So it's not a meaningless thing, nor it's a religious thing, but a practical, actual one.

For me, it's the opposite, I want the tabs, but the pain is exactly the same.

Of course, now the big decision part is, are you going to be an asshole and start fighting about it, or accept the different viewpoint, slowing down your workflow, or try to work out some compromise.

Many simply won't want to accept slowing down their work, because they think it is important. While a bit selfish, this is also natural and understandable.

Finally, the deciding factor again is, not religion, but actual engineering question: the choice of text editor and its configuration. It either makes or breaks the usage of spaces or tabs.

So sorry, I don't agree; this isn't a religious technical opinion, but an actual technical one. The fact that personal learning process is part of that technicality, and you could have ended up either way, does not make it religious.

Totally agree!

I used to be a "space guy" (for more than 20 years), 16 years ago I "converted" to tab in all software I write (which is a lot), this is across many different tools, for me this has been so much easier!
Nothing to do with "religion".

[Siwastaja]

I also used spaces because the software I learnt to write code in, MS-DOS 6.22 EDIT, inserted 4 spaces by press of tab, by default, if I recall correctly.

I converted to tabs also about 16 years ago and have never looked back. Tabs work properly almost everywhere. Same can't be said about spaces (reading, sure! but not writing), which are a pain in anything else but a really decent editor which understands the language syntax and some typical indentation rules and can thus align the cursor properly. With such editor though, they almost always support tabs, too, so good tooling solves the problem really, and you should be able to cope whichever is used within the project.

I think the hatred for tabs is that many editors render tabs with width=8 (by default, or not configurable at all), and it seems excessive to some. This was one of the reasons I didn't like to use tabs when I was a newbie: lines went too far right. Of course, this was just an indication I was writing bad code. It was explained to me, I didn't believe it. Later I did see those more experienced people were exactly right: if my lines become too long, I need to refactor the code into functions/etc. 8-character wide indentation is really fine, and I use that now, all the time! And I was a true believer of 4 once, and used spaces to enforce that.

Now I try to think about others, too. If I want to align things like

Code: [Select]

        uint8_t asd = something something |
                      something something;

, I do it by first using tab on both lines, then spaces, so that the alignment works out even if the tab width setting is changed! The idea is that code looks OK regardless of the setting. I don't go as far as actually checking it out with different settings, though.

[snarkysparky]

object oriented programming ?

[PlainName]

Perhaps programmers and EEs have the kind of mindset where they figure out a solution that works and that's The solution.

It's more OCD than religion. With OCD you might not want to waste effort with the aggro of working out the proper solution again and again, whereas with religion it's just a belief that it is right regardless of the merits. I think with a technical person you could conceivably demonstrate a better solution, whereas with religion there is not a hope in hell of a conversion (otherwise they weren't really religious).

[Bud]

For neatly looking text it is difficult to use spaces with proportional fonts. OK with fixed width fonts. TAB helps align lines of text correctly.

[langwadt]

Programming with tabs is like a pain for me.

Right there, you answered your own question without even realizing you asked that question!

If programming with tabs is like pain for you, what happens if you pull a code file from a co worker, written with tabs, and need to work with that file together?

It's pain to you: for technical, actual reasons: the fact you have learned to use spaces, like you learn to ride a bicycle, so tabs really work slower for you. Maybe the text editor of your choice works better with spaces, too.

So it's not a meaningless thing, nor it's a religious thing, but a practical, actual one.

For me, it's the opposite, I want the tabs, but the pain is exactly the same.

Of course, now the big decision part is, are you going to be an asshole and start fighting about it, or accept the different viewpoint, slowing down your workflow, or try to work out some compromise.

Many simply won't want to accept slowing down their work, because they think it is important. While a bit selfish, this is also natural and understandable.

Finally, the deciding factor again is, not religion, but actual engineering question: the choice of text editor and its configuration. It either makes or breaks the usage of spaces or tabs.

So sorry, I don't agree; this isn't a religious technical opinion, but an actual technical one. The fact that personal learning process is part of that technicality, and you could have ended up either way, does not make it religious.

the problem is you can't easily just look at the text and tell the difference and sometimes tab vs. spaces matter.
wonder how many hours have been wasted debugging makefiles because a what should have been a tab was spaces

[Siwastaja]

the problem is you can't easily just look at the text and tell the difference and sometimes tab vs. spaces matter.
wonder how many hours have been wasted debugging makefiles because a what should have been a tab was spaces

Makefile is a special exception, and make's designers have regretted that particularly stupid choice.

I can't figure out any programming language in modern use which suffers the same design fault.

But of course, if you use programming languages with significant whitespace, all bets are off anyway. You need to cope.

[free_electron]

oldest profession in the world : electrician. when god said : "let there be light", those guys had been running cables for weeks...

[PlainName]

I can't figure out any programming language in modern use which suffers the same design fault.

I had exactly this (but the other way around) a couple of days ago, but can't recall what with  Don't do Python so it wasn't that, and CMake is happy with either. Must've been so bad I burnt that memory out with a hot poker.

[SiliconWizard]

It seems that people's minds are programmed to take sides and we think that it is the only true way of seeing things.

Yes they are. And it's an efficiency issue. If you never took sides, you would keep changing your mind, never settle for anything and ultimately never achieve anything. We *have* to take sides just to be able to function.

When it becomes pathological or "religious" is when you take sides on a particular topic that's not in your best interest or otherwise is objectively worse than another option. But in all other cases, that's a necessity. Heck, even when the particular choice you make on a particular topic is not the objectively best one - or is even the worst - it's often better to stick to one rather than constantly changing your mind and not being able to settle for anything.

It's a misconception to think that "science" prevents that behavior. It absolutely does not, and for the reason I exposed above. Never taking sides would prevent you from achieving anything. Scientists take sides all the time. The bad ones will refuse to change sides when exposed to new evidence showing that their current "side" is bogus (and history is full of them). But meanwhile, they'll stick to a set of ideas. Just like anyone else.

[m k]

object oriented programming ?

Yes.

My indent is 2 spaces.
So in theory it can still be replaced.

[free_electron]

i leave the indentation to the ide to figure out. like it should be. proper IDEs line up to word boundaries (first letter of the word on the line above to the right or equal to current position)

[PlainName]

i leave the indentation to the ide to figure out

That's kind of like leaving the driving to full autopilot - sure, it's nice to offload some tedium but you'll be stuffed when your motor goes in for repair and you realise you don't know how to drive the loaner.

[Monkeh]

i leave the indentation to the ide to figure out

That's kind of like leaving the driving to full autopilot - sure, it's nice to offload some tedium but you'll be stuffed when your motor goes in for repair and you realise you don't know how to drive the loaner.

He's paid too well to drive a loaner, he'd insist on getting a driver with it.

[tooki]

It's hard for me to take the video seriously when they're using Apple computers.

Yeah, I mean, only a handful of the world's biggest tech companies do their design and coding (at least partly) on Macs. But what would Apple, Google, FB, Twitter, IBM, etc. know about that... 

Turns out, code professionals also like computers that just work properly. And given that much of modern code runs on a remote server anyway -- and thus the computer is used largely as a web browser and glorified text editor -- it just seems silly to get your knickers in a twist about what computer someone chooses to use.

Feel free to use whatever OS you like. But don't look down on others for their choice.

[Circlotron]

This has to be the best example yet of a first world problem.

[PlainName]

That's has to be the best example yet of whataboutery.

[Someone]

i leave the indentation to the ide to figure out

That's kind of like leaving the driving to full autopilot - sure, it's nice to offload some tedium but you'll be stuffed when your motor goes in for repair and you realise you don't know how to drive the loaner.

and the reason most code bases end up with the worst solution: mixture of tabs and spaces. Its these idiots that assume everyone forevermore will use their exact IDE (version, platform, etc) and their choice of settings (probably default, but not always).

All tabs, no worries,
All spaces, no worries,

But then mindless user with their "helpful" IDE that hides this and makes it look pretty for them starts adding in a random mixture of tabs and spaces.

Different environments disagreeing on how many spaces to each tab and a mixture of tabs and spaces = pain

Now, trying to get people to agree on the first half of that equation is probably the actual issue, 2,3,4,8  spaces to represent a tab? (the video posed in the OP says 8 ). Until then you cannot use tabs to bring anything after some ragged text into alignment, only for the start of line before other characters.

[Someone]

That is so and we all assume it for political or religious opinions, but it never ceases to amaze me that it also occurs in things as banal as spaces and tabs.

You forgot the special example that only exists on this forum: "zooming out" on an oscilloscope!

[Someone]

For neatly looking text it is difficult to use spaces with proportional fonts. OK with fixed width fonts. TAB helps align lines of text correctly.

People who want to use proportional fonts in programming:

[eugene]

It's hard for me to take the video seriously when they're using Apple computers.

Yeah, I mean, only a handful of the world's biggest tech companies ...
[blah blah blah]

For the humor impaired, I was making a joke about religious technical opinions.