Reply to: Spaces or Tabs

[voodooflux]

Because it improves readability, maintainability clarity... A curly brace on the same line makes a hideous mess of the code, so why do it? The first thing I do when I have to read code looking like that is to structure it properly. Not doing so just makes deciphering it unnecessarily difficult.

WHS

I had this discussion with somebody at a client a few years ago. I ended it by saying "Fine, you do it that way; I'll do it the right way."

I have a similar running "jest" with a friend of mine, albeit his/your way are obviously the wrong way

[TimberWolf]

Ugh - why on a new line?

Because it improves readability, maintainability clarity... A curly brace on the same line makes a hideous mess of the code, so why do it? The first thing I do when I have to read code looking like that is to structure it properly. Not doing so just makes deciphering it unnecessarily difficult.

I had this discussion with somebody at a client a few years ago. I ended it by saying "Fine, you do it that way; I'll do it the right way."

Amateur

You'd really prefer something hideous looking such as:

for(i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
     if(i % 2 == 0) {
         doSomething(i);         
         doSomethingelse(i); 
         etc; }}

over :

for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) 
{
    if (i % 2 == 0) 
    {
         doSomething(i); 
         doSomethingelse(i); 
         etc;
    }
}

[Bob Dalek]

Config files or none. That is the question. (for piddly little 10-line scripts).

[expat]

New line means its easier to visually match a } with a {

Most important is the vertical alignment.

Not that I ever program anything anymore that needs braces round blocks of code

Well, no. But I don't mind telling the kids where they're going wrong

[Spacecadet]

Ugh - why on a new line?

I had this discussion with somebody at a client a few years ago. I ended it by saying "Fine, you do it that way; I'll do it the right way."

New line means its easier to visually match a } with a {

Not that I ever program anything anymore that needs braces round blocks of code

[expat]

Edlin doesn't.

HTH.

Neither does vi (though I always hesitate to state anything about UNIX because there is always some smarterarse...). I use vi for the same reason as I once used edlin: at least you know it will be on any machine you use.

PS I just verified that by opening a DOs window and running edlin here. How do you get out of entry mode?

[Cowboy Bob]

Anyone who voted tabs deserves their next job to be remotely hotfixing code via ssh and vi. Anyone who's done such a thing will know how evil tabs are and that those who use them should burn in hell.

Same thing applies to those who put curly braces on the same line and not on a new line, and for the same reason. Screw Sun and their coding standards, Gosling obviously never loaded a file into vi with lines wrapping all over the place and tried to work out what code was part of what loop.

[NickFitz]

No, the saddest thread ever would be whether to put the first curly brace on the same line as the start of the block of statements <shudder> or on a fresh line.

Ugh - why on a new line?

I had this discussion with somebody at a client a few years ago. I ended it by saying "Fine, you do it that way; I'll do it the right way."

[Spacecadet]

No, the saddest thread ever would be whether to put the first curly brace on the same line as the start of the block of statements <shudder> or on a fresh line.

always a fresh line!!!
someone needs to make a poll

[TimberWolf]

This is the saddest thread ever.

No, the saddest thread ever would be whether to put the first curly brace on the same line as the start of the block of statements <shudder> or on a fresh line.

[OwlHoot]

.. Sod portability. Tabs are the way to go for indenting.

If you want to convert tabs to 4/5/6... spaces then any editor (or grep) can do that for you.

Why add white-space bloat to the source code?

Tabs are evil. Anyone who puts them into source code (when not expanded automatically to spaces) will find their soul sealed in a bottle and cast down into the deepest pit of hell, there to remain in torment for all eternity next to Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and the guy who decided to use tabs in the Unix "make" utility ...

HTH

[ChimpMaster]

This is the saddest thread ever.

[EternalOptimist]

luckily the guy whose code I am maintaining used neither, so I don't have to worry.

the steaming pillock

[bogeyman]

Actually, I think the reason Norm suggested that was just to stir things up a bit - he deliberately added a few things to the coding standards (which were exhaustive) that he knew were contentious, justifying them with arguments that might make some sense but weren't really good enough, simply to get people discussing things - a very effective technique, as it turned out

He said as much to me a couple of days later when I called him on the idea of using single-quotes around attribute values, which was such a contentious issue that one senior developer threatened to resign over it before Norm finally admitted that it was a wind-up

As for whitespace in source code: assuming we're referring to stuff sent over the wire like HTML, JS and CSS (as it doesn't matter for things like C which are just sitting in source control), such whitespace is effectively eliminated by gzip compression, and you should be using that to send stuff over the wire anyway - the performance improvement is much better than anything you might get from chopping out spaces.

The purpose of these coding standards is to ensure that things are consistent, as that improves maintainability, particularly in an environment where people are allowed to follow their own choice of editor and so forth. If, two years from now, somebody revisits the comment template for Yahoo! Answers, they shouldn't have to be bothered about which editor it was last edited in and what the tab settings were, nor should they have to spend time changing it to their preferred style or reconfiguring their editor, and so forth - all files should be formatted consistently. It doesn't really matter if it's with two, three or eight spaces, as long as everybody does it the same way.

I know what you mean Nick. Done my share of sitting in meetings discussing standards for code and other things. Contentious and off-the-wall suggestions often enliven the discussion but rarely bring about consensus in my experience.

Anyhow. The Bogey Standard says use tabs for indent, because one \t == one level of logical indentation.

Two, three or any other multiple of spaces does not equal one logical level of indentation without a constant divisor.

So there

[NickFitz]

Why does HTML need to be deeply nested?

Surely the days of nested-table hell are behind us, and who codes long screeds of markup these days anyway, now that it's mostly spat out in modular chunks by the backend platform/language of your choice?

Anyway. Sod portability. Tabs are the way to go for indenting.

If you want to convert tabs to 4/5/6... spaces then any editor (or grep) can do that for you.

Why add white-space bloat to the source code?

Actually, I think the reason Norm suggested that was just to stir things up a bit - he deliberately added a few things to the coding standards (which were exhaustive) that he knew were contentious, justifying them with arguments that might make some sense but weren't really good enough, simply to get people discussing things - a very effective technique, as it turned out

He said as much to me a couple of days later when I called him on the idea of using single-quotes around attribute values, which was such a contentious issue that one senior developer threatened to resign over it before Norm finally admitted that it was a wind-up

As for whitespace in source code: assuming we're referring to stuff sent over the wire like HTML, JS and CSS (as it doesn't matter for things like C which are just sitting in source control), such whitespace is effectively eliminated by gzip compression, and you should be using that to send stuff over the wire anyway - the performance improvement is much better than anything you might get from chopping out spaces.

The purpose of these coding standards is to ensure that things are consistent, as that improves maintainability, particularly in an environment where people are allowed to follow their own choice of editor and so forth. If, two years from now, somebody revisits the comment template for Yahoo! Answers, they shouldn't have to be bothered about which editor it was last edited in and what the tab settings were, nor should they have to spend time changing it to their preferred style or reconfiguring their editor, and so forth - all files should be formatted consistently. It doesn't really matter if it's with two, three or eight spaces, as long as everybody does it the same way.