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According to Statistics, Programming with Spaces Instead of Tabs Makes You Richer

posted by n1 on Sunday June 18 2017, @12:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-your-bar-tab dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The annual Stack Overflow developer surveys often include lots of bad news. "People still use PHP," for example, is a recurring and distressing theme. "Perl exists" is another.

But never before has the survey revealed something as devastatingly terrible as the 2017 survey. Using PHP and Perl are matters of taste. Extremely masochistic taste, certainly, but nobody is wrong for using those languages; it's just the programming equivalent of enjoying Adam Sandler movies. But the 2017 survey goes beyond taste; it goes into deep philosophical questions of right and wrong, and it turns out that being wrong pays more than being right.

Developers who use tabs to indent their code, developers who fight for truth and justice and all that is good in the world, those developers have a median salary of $43,750.

But developers who use spaces to indent their code, developers who side with evil and probably spend all day kicking kittens and punching puppies? Their median salary is $59,140.

Source: ArsTechnica

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @05:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @05:02AM (#527341)

    it's copying the visible form of something with no understanding.
    Tab is a control key. It is a left over from teletype. On the original typewriters where you would pound out a tab it would put out 4/8 spaces (or configurable using tab stops). There was no special char there just a carriage movement. It was space on the original medium. There was no difference. Then came along the teletypes and their special key codes for it. Some fool thought it was a good idea to put the control code in a text file. When you have a choice of two things people will inevitably pick both.

    I personally do not care *which* one you pick. Just be consistent. Do not mix them. If you do 4 spaces then use 4 spaces everywhere, or tabs everywhere. Just be consistent. That is all I ask. Especially if you are in python.

    My projects all use spaces as tabs have had a bad habit of braking compilers for me. 4 different ways of chasing my time in what ended up being a tab instead of a space. That is just me protecting myself against wasted time.