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+++
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title = "Why Mixing Spaces and Tabs IS a Big Deal"
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date = 2016-12-15
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["tabs", "spaces", "clean code", "editors"]
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+++
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Why something so small is actually a big deal.
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<!-- more -->
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Reading Reddit comments about [How terrible code gets written by perfectly
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sane people](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5gc871/how_terrible_code_gets_written_by_perfectly_sane/)
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when I read this comment:
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>> spaces/tabs for indentation
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> Is this a joke? I've been programming professionally from 2008 and I've not
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> yet found an actual case where this was an actual problem. The code looks
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> the same on everyone's screen if you set tab length in the editor to same
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> as the amount of spaces in your indentation. It would take seconds to fix
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> this :) I've never seen a tabs vs spaces argument go anywhere. It's such a
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> dumb thing to complain about. Maybe because I'm young I don't have
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> experience of bad code editors of old days but it's 2016 now. It's not a
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> big deal anymore.
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Unfortunately, I lost the time to properly reply to this comment, but here it
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goes:
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No, it *isn't* a joke. If you've read [Clean Code](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3735293-clean-code?from_search=true),
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you'd see that, at some point, Uncle Bob mentions that there isn't an actual
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experiment about it, but his team personally found that a programmer that cares about
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consistency and follows coding standards are prone to write less buggy code.
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I get what he means: If someone cares about the small stuff,
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they also care about the big stuff. It doesn't mean that people that ignore
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coding standards (and the difference between using tabs and using spaces)
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doesn't care about the big stuff; but on my own experience in those 28
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years in the field proved the opposite: people who cared about
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"putting the code at the door" without worrying about following coding standards
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(and we can add tabs vs spaces here), proper code documentation,
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separation of concerns, a good level of abstraction, tend to write
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horrible/unmaintable code.
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*This* is why mixed spaces/tabs is bad: it means that whoever didn't care enough
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with something so small as the coding standard, probably didn't care
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about the bigger stuff. Their only worry was to deliever stuff, no matter
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what. "And no matter what" usually results in terrible code.
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So, while not an "actual problem", it is an indicator that something really
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terrible is going on. So, no, it isn't a joke and yes, it is a big deal. And
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it has absolutely nothing to do with "bad code editors", it's a problem with
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"bad coders".
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