Re: [BBC] Programmers who use spaces 'paid more'

[JJ <jj4public@vfemail.net>]

On Sun, 18 Jun 2017 21:45:16 +0800, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:

> Computer programmers who use spaces as part of their coding earn $15,370 
> (£12,000) more per year than those who use tabs, a survey of developers 
> has revealed.
> 
> Full story: <http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40302410>
> 
> The survey found the salary difference stretched across different 
> languages, countries and experience levels.
> 
> The debate over whether it is better to use spaces or tabs to indent 
> code has raged among programmers for years.
> 
> Indents act like paragraph markers and help define how programs work.
> 
> The result was "surprising," said David Robinson, data scientist at 
> Stack Overflow which carried out the survey of 12,400 developers.
> 
> 'Pepsi or Coke question'
> 
> .... more ....
> 
> Whether tabs or spaces were used could have an impact, he said, when 
> hand-written code was turned into working software. This process is 
> handled by a separate program called an interpreter or compiler. Some of 
> these can crash if they encounter something, such as a tab, when they 
> were only expecting spaces.
> 
> Professional developers typically set up their coding editor to use 
> either tabs or spaces to show the relationships between functional 
> elements, he said. Code can get harder to read if viewed in an editor 
> expecting tabs and getting spaces or vice versa.

Tab characters are annoying. They messes the cursor's column position when
it's being moved up/down and through the middle of the non existing space
which was generated by the tab character.