tabs, spaces, and retarded programmers
Posted by Stephen Waits Mon, 03 Jul 2006 19:31:57 GMT
Wow, I ran across Elastic tabstops - the solution to the tabs-versus-spaces issue (via reddit) today. This is actually unbelievable to me.
It made me realize, again, that people are retarded. Like many of you, I experience this realization every day of my life.
The solution to this problem has always been simple. Use both tabs and spaces. Tabs control indentation, spaces control alignment. It’s easy, doesn’t slow your coding down a bit, and will render perfectly in every editor in the world.
I’ve been doing this for a decade+ myself, and have trained, or at least attempted to train many others in such elegance. For more detail, take a look at where I described this in detail several years ago in this Usenet post.
Doesn't work I'm afraid. - copy this into a monospaced editor...
if.(true).{........//.comment
[TAB]doFunction()..//.comment
}..................//.comment
if.(true).{........//.comment
[BIGGERTAB]doFunction()..//.comment
}..................//.comment
Oh, but it does. Granted, not in the ONE case you've shown; however, I've been doing it for long enought that I know it works just fine. And it solves the "I want to view this with [2,3,4,8] space tabs" religious hell.
I like your solution, I will use this in my future coding. Previously I had been using 4 spaces for indentation and spaces for alignment.
Great to hear. You'll be happy you did it. Writing pretty code is satisfying, especially knowing it will be pretty for everyone.
The first reply is quite correct -this doen't always work. I like your response: "Granted, not in the ONE case you've shown" This ONE case (amongst others) is actually solved by the elastic tabstops idea that you're trying to rubbish so much. So, who's the retard here?
This ONE case has actually never happened to me in all of my years. Hey, if you like "elastic tabstops", go use them. Don't worry that 99% of people will have no idea what they are, and no support for them in their browser. You also shouldn't worry that the "solution" to this "problem" is *much* simpler than "elastic tabstops". Go on.. don't worry about it.