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

["J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com>]

In article <oi78k3$hb4$1@dont-email.me>, invalid@invalid.invalid says...
> 
> On 6/18/2017 6:45 AM, 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.
> > 
> 
> What about setting up the single press of the tab key to insert n 
> spaces? ;^)

That's what he said.

However generally speaking an editor that is set up to insert tabs has no 
problem _displaying_ code that was indented with spaces.