xkcd

by **hotaru** » Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:53 pm UTC

bytbox wrote:5 tabs. If you're nesting any deeper than that, you're screwed anyway.

apparently you haven't seen much lisp code...

by **bytbox** » Mon Oct 18, 2010 9:04 pm UTC

hotaru wrote:
bytbox wrote:5 tabs. If you're nesting any deeper than that, you're screwed anyway.

apparently you haven't seen much lisp code...

I'm speaking about bracketed languages only. Other languages, including lisp, often work/look better with spaces. For lisp, I'd go with 4.

by **Jplus** » Mon Oct 18, 2010 11:05 pm UTC

Lines longer than 40 characters happen often enough. Also, I think 8 spaces is just more than you need (and I find it ugly). 4 spaces is already very well readable. And 5 levels of indentation can sometimes not be enough, although I agree you should generally try to stay below that.

I have never experienced that shorter indentations would make me believe I can indent more levels. Actually I find 5 levels of 2-space indentations harder to read that 5 levels of 4-space indentation, and therefore I would also sooner feel urged to do something about it.

I used to auto-expand tabs because that would guarantee my files look the same everywhere, but I recently switched to hard tabs, for a number of reasons. One of them is that other people might prefer to set the tab width to a different number of spaces. Also they take up less space (I also use them to line up comments, so it can make quite a difference on a large project), and they can be removed faster using backspace/delete.

by **Thesh** » Mon Oct 18, 2010 11:24 pm UTC

If you code in C#, you will find that it is pretty much impossible to write anything significant with less than 5 levels of indentation. 3 levels of indentation is pretty much the minimum:

Code: Select all: namespace { class { function () { //Code } } }

That said, I still find setting the tab width to 4 spaces to be perfectly acceptable.

by **flying sheep** » Wed Oct 20, 2010 6:00 pm UTC

do you really do that in c#? i remember that in java, we did 1 class per file, so the minimum would be 1 level of indentation (stuff inside functions, eeh, sorry, methods)

by **hintss** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 1:03 am UTC

I tend to keep 4 spaces per tab, or for stuff with more levels, I use 2. Then for stuff like <html> and <head> are considered the 0th level: the first level inside isn't indented

by **Thesh** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:41 am UTC

flying sheep wrote:do you really do that in c#? i remember that in java, we did 1 class per file, so the minimum would be 1 level of indentation (stuff inside functions, eeh, sorry, methods)

Yeah, that's pretty much how everything you write is. And yeah, methods... Makes less sense than functions, but we stick to the name anyway (probably because someone wrote the name down in a book somewhere).

by **flying sheep** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 12:49 am UTC

i meant it like hintss: we didn’t indent the forst level, because it’s quite useless: you don’t gain any more readability, but you have indented 99.999% of your code. i think it’s much better to do

Code: Select all: public class Stuff { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("This command is far to long for a simple print statement"); } }

by **Thesh** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 2:13 am UTC

flying sheep wrote:i meant it like hintss: we didn’t indent the forst level, because it’s quite useless: you don’t gain any more readability, but you have indented 99.999% of your code. i think it’s much better to do
Code: Select all
public class Stuff { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("This command is far to long for a simple print statement"); } }

Makes sense to me, but default .NET templates, code samples from Microsoft, and all of the code I seen is like I posted. I agree that it is a waste, especially with the namespace. I generally prefer the C++ style of defining functions outside of the class. Check this example from msdn, they even nest namespaces:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z2kcy19k(v=VS.100).aspx

Code: Select all: namespace SomeNameSpace { public class MyClass { static void Main() { Nested.NestedNameSpaceClass.SayHello(); } } // a nested namespace namespace Nested { public class NestedNameSpaceClass { public static void SayHello() { Console.WriteLine("Hello"); } } } } // Output: Hello

by **cjmcjmcjmcjm** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 5:06 am UTC

by **flying sheep** » Sun Dec 05, 2010 2:26 am UTC

to the “we want people with crappy editors to be able to edit our code”-people:
as soon as elastic tabstops are implemented in more editors, you will have to whine even more

by **Darryl** » Sun Jan 23, 2011 12:43 am UTC

cjmcjmcjmcjm wrote:Tabs

Though nothing more than this truly needs to be said (as well as spaces for alignment, natch), an explanation beyond "it's what my professors insisted on".

I use(d) weird indentation (past tense since I haven't actually written code since 2004, and have since changed majors to math education). I like 3 space indentation, as it looks good to my eyes. No one else I knew used 3-space, so I set my editor to display tabs at a length of 3, while others left theirs at their preferred lengths. If you indent with tabs, I see it in my preferred 3, you see it at 2, and Johnny sees it at 7 (because while I may be a bit eccentric, Johnny's just plain weird

), but if you indent to your 4 spaces with spaces, it clashes with what others expect in indented code. While having your aesthetics respected on your screen is good, tabs let you do this and still respect those of others when they have to look at your code for various reasons.

by **happosai** » Thu Feb 03, 2011 6:06 pm UTC

"tabs for indentation" and "spaces for aligning". Works perfectly, making both the "tab" and "spaces" people happy. Everything was happy, until people started using code editors with variable width font. frackers.

by **Darryl** » Thu Feb 03, 2011 8:53 pm UTC

happosai wrote:Everything was happy, until people started using code editors with variable width font. frackers.

That abomination does not exist. Changing to a different fixed width is fine (I've used Lucida Typewriter in Visual Studio when I had to use that editor), but a variable-width? That shouldn't even be an option in code editors.

by **flying sheep** » Fri Feb 04, 2011 2:57 am UTC

happosai wrote:"tabs for indentation" and "spaces for aligning". Works perfectly, making both the "tab" and "spaces" people happy. Everything was happy, until people started using code editors with variable width font. frackers.

then they have to use elastic tabstops or not use visual alignment alltogether:

Code: Select all: this = {"looks": "shitty", "with": "variable"} character("width.", "and without elastic tabstops")

Code: Select all: this = { "looks": "good", "with": "variable" } character( "width,", "too" )

note that this forum converts tabs into spaces. of course this is written with tabs.

by **Pesto** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 1:11 am UTC

Tabs cause the testing framework in Groovy on Grails to give icky output. It gave me a sad.

by **flying sheep** » Sat May 07, 2011 9:41 am UTC

my day was just made by discovering that someone picked up my GSoC idea of implementing elastic tabstops into kate.

xkcd

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