[BBC] Programmers who use spaces 'paid more'

[BBC] Programmers who use spaces 'paid more'

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

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.

-- 
   @~@   Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
  / v \  Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
   ^ ^   (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10)  Linux 2.6.39.3
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

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

[Per Sandberg]

This makes perfect sense !

But this is the same class of statistics that tells you that milk is 
causing accidents since the number of children in injured in car 
accidents in an area is direct proportional to the consumption of milk 
in the same area.


Den 2017-06-18 kl. 15:45, skrev Mr. Man-wai Chang:
> 
> 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.
> 

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

[J. Clarke]

In article <_9B1B.213777$gM7.90022@fx44.am4>, per.s.sandberg@bahnhof.se 
says...
> 
> This makes perfect sense !
> 
> But this is the same class of statistics that tells you that milk is 
> causing accidents since the number of children in injured in car 
> accidents in an area is direct proportional to the consumption of milk 
> in the same area.

OK, so tell us what is the third factor that results in programmers who use 
spaces being paid more than programmers who use tabs.

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

[Lew Pitcher]

J. Clarke wrote:

> In article <_9B1B.213777$gM7.90022@fx44.am4>, per.s.sandberg@bahnhof.se
> says...
>> 
>> This makes perfect sense !
>> 
>> But this is the same class of statistics that tells you that milk is
>> causing accidents since the number of children in injured in car
>> accidents in an area is direct proportional to the consumption of milk
>> in the same area.
> 
> OK, so tell us what is the third factor that results in programmers who
> use spaces being paid more than programmers who use tabs.

What third factor?
Remember, correlation is not causation. You'd be surprised at how often 
people forget that. You can often take two random, real-world variables and 
find some sort of correlation between them; that doesn't mean that there is 
any causative factor between those variables values - random is random.

As for "programmers who use spaces get paid more than programmers who use 
tabs", here are a few more for you

- there is a direct, linear correlation between
  {US spending on science, space and technology}
  and
  {suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation}. 
- there is a direct, linear correlation between
  {the number of people who drowned by falling into a pool}
  and
  {films that Nicholas Cage appeared in}

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations


-- 
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills, We Trust"
PGP public key available upon request

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

[Chris M. Thomasson]

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? ;^)

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

[J. Clarke]

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.

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

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

"J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:

> In article <_9B1B.213777$gM7.90022@fx44.am4>, per.s.sandberg@bahnhof.se 
> says...
>> 
>> This makes perfect sense !
>> 
>> But this is the same class of statistics that tells you that milk is 
>> causing accidents since the number of children in injured in car 
>> accidents in an area is direct proportional to the consumption of milk 
>> in the same area.
>
> OK, so tell us what is the third factor that results in programmers who use 
> spaces being paid more than programmers who use tabs.

IQ

Higher IQ makes you use spaces instead of tabs.
Higher IQ also makes you get paid more.



-- 
__Pascal J. Bourguignon
http://www.informatimago.com

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

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 19/6/2017 4:13 AM, Per Sandberg wrote:
> This makes perfect sense !
> 
> But this is the same class of statistics that tells you that milk is 
> causing accidents since the number of children in injured in car 
> accidents in an area is direct proportional to the consumption of milk 
> in the same area.

Personally speaking, hard spaces is better than tabs (white spaces). You 
never how other programmers set up their tab width.

-- 
   @~@   Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
  / v \  Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
   ^ ^   (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10)  Linux 2.6.39.3
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

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

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 19/6/2017 9:19 AM, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
> 
> What about setting up the single press of the tab key to insert n 
> spaces? ;^)

It's called a keyboard macro, well-known in the world computer gaming 
keyboards and mouses. :)

-- 
   @~@   Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
  / v \  Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
   ^ ^   (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10)  Linux 2.6.39.3
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

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

[AnthonyL]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:47:31 +0800, "Mr. Man-wai Chang"
<toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 19/6/2017 9:19 AM, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
>> 
>> What about setting up the single press of the tab key to insert n 
>> spaces? ;^)
>
>It's called a keyboard macro, well-known in the world computer gaming 
>keyboards and mouses. :)
>

I seem to recall it being a standard option in the editor our
programmers used, something like "Fill tabs with spaces y/N"


-- 
AnthonyL

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

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 19/6/2017 7:24 PM, AnthonyL wrote:
>>
>> It's called a keyboard macro, well-known in the world computer gaming
>> keyboards and mouses. :)
> 
> I seem to recall it being a standard option in the editor our
> programmers used, something like "Fill tabs with spaces y/N"

The old way.

-- 
   @~@   Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
  / v \  Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
   ^ ^   (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10)  Linux 2.6.39.3
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

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

[JJ]

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.

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

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 19/6/2017 9:53 PM, JJ wrote:
> 
> 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.

I think that depends on the editor you were using. Or is it a Window$ 
Win32 objects behavior? I frankly don't know.

-- 
   @~@   Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
  / v \  Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
   ^ ^   (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10)  Linux 2.6.39.3
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

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

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 19/6/2017 1:50 PM, Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
>>
>> OK, so tell us what is the third factor that results in programmers who use
>> spaces being paid more than programmers who use tabs.
> 
> IQ

Why not spy activities? The sole purpose of the news story was to attack 
real programmers? ;)

-- 
   @~@   Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
  / v \  Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
   ^ ^   (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10)  Linux 2.6.39.3
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

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

[Chris M. Thomasson]

On 6/18/2017 7:23 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 

For some reason I was thinking of the following video clip from the 
Silicon Valley series on HBO:

https://youtu.be/SsoOG6ZeyUI

This person actually presses the damn space key n times, where n is the 
number of spaces. WOW!

;^)

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

[frankmanning]

I remember the whole tabs-vs-spaces thing was a sore subject when I got my first programming job in 1981. To me it's unbelievable that it's still unresolved 36 years later.

-- Frank Manning

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

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:49:12 -0700 (PDT), frankmanning@earthlink.net
declaimed the following:

>I remember the whole tabs-vs-spaces thing was a sore subject when I got my first programming job in 1981. To me it's unbelievable that it's still unresolved 36 years later.

	It's a significant factor for Python. Tabs are considered equivalent to
8-space indent, regardless of how the editor is configured to display them.

	Someone using a 4-space display editor /sees/

<sp><sp><sp><sp>code
<tab>code

as being the same level of indent, the Python parser sees 

<4-sp>code
<8-sp>code

hence different indentation levels -- and since Python uses indent level to
determine the end of code blocks, it will object.
-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

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

[J. Clarke]

In article <oi997u$efv$2@dont-email.me>, invalid@invalid.invalid says...
> 
> On 6/18/2017 7:23 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> > In article <oi78k3$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.
> > 
> > 
> 
> For some reason I was thinking of the following video clip from the 
> Silicon Valley series on HBO:
> 
> https://youtu.be/SsoOG6ZeyUI
> 
> This person actually presses the damn space key n times, where n is the 
> number of spaces. WOW!
> 
> ;^)

If the series is all like that I'm glad I never watched it.  There's 
something _wrong_ with that boy.

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

[Snit]

On 6/18/17, 4:03 PM, in article
MPG.33b0d0e32e40d66b98ad93@news.eternal-september.org, "J. Clarke"
<j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:

> In article <_9B1B.213777$gM7.90022@fx44.am4>, per.s.sandberg@bahnhof.se
> says...
>> 
>> This makes perfect sense !
>> 
>> But this is the same class of statistics that tells you that milk is
>> causing accidents since the number of children in injured in car
>> accidents in an area is direct proportional to the consumption of milk
>> in the same area.
> 
> OK, so tell us what is the third factor that results in programmers who use
> spaces being paid more than programmers who use tabs.

Could be programmers of certain ages or from different sources of education
learn one or the other method.

-- 
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They cannot
use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel somehow
superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

<https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308>

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

[Chris M. Thomasson]

On 6/19/2017 7:19 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> In article <oi997u$efv$2@dont-email.me>, invalid@invalid.invalid says...
>>
>> On 6/18/2017 7:23 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
>>> In article <oi78k3$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.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> For some reason I was thinking of the following video clip from the
>> Silicon Valley series on HBO:
>>
>> https://youtu.be/SsoOG6ZeyUI
>>
>> This person actually presses the damn space key n times, where n is the
>> number of spaces. WOW!
>>
>> ;^)
> 
> If the series is all like that I'm glad I never watched it.  There's
> something _wrong_ with that boy.

Lol! The character might be suffering from a bit of Asperger's syndrome.

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

[Anton Shepelev]

JJ:

> Tab characters are annoying.  They messes the cur-
> sor'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.

There is a standard convention that  works  100%  of
the time:
                 Indent with tabs
                 Align with spaces

Such code will look good regardless of the tab width
used in the editor, so that each programmer may  set
up whatever tab width he prefers.

-- 
()  ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\  http://preview.tinyurl.com/qcy6mjc [archived]

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

[jm.tarrasa]

El domingo, 18 de junio de 2017, 15:45:18 (UTC+2), Mr. Man-wai Chang  escribió:
> 
> The debate over whether it is better to use spaces or tabs to indent 
> code has raged among programmers for years.

Elastic tabstops: http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/

I use them for myself, for coding and for writing text, they work really well.

They are a great idea. They should be widespread and all editors support them. But unfortunately we are not there yet, so I can't use them in my job.

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

[Simon Wright]

"Mr. Man-wai Chang" <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> writes:

> The debate over whether it is better to use spaces or tabs to indent
> code has raged among programmers for years.

Dead simple: use the TAB key to tell the editor to align the
current/selected lines appropriately; and leave the editor to decide
whether to use tab characters (C-I) to implement the indent or just
spaces.

I agree that you have a problem if your project standards require some
weird setting, but it's still a question of customising the editor.

I bet that 90+% of the Ada programmers who've read this thread are using
GNAT, and if they are using either of the most likely editors (GPS or
Emacs) they'll have this sorted for them without any need for fretting
over it.

Anyone who argues for tabs on the grounds that they save space is
clearly living in 1987 at the latest. If you want to save space, why not
remove all comments?

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

[lyttlec]

On 06/19/2017 11:00 PM, Snit wrote:
> On 6/18/17, 4:03 PM, in article
> MPG.33b0d0e32e40d66b98ad93@news.eternal-september.org, "J. Clarke"
> <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> In article <_9B1B.213777$gM7.90022@fx44.am4>, per.s.sandberg@bahnhof.se
>> says...
>>>
>>> This makes perfect sense !
>>>
>>> But this is the same class of statistics that tells you that milk is
>>> causing accidents since the number of children in injured in car
>>> accidents in an area is direct proportional to the consumption of milk
>>> in the same area.
>>
>> OK, so tell us what is the third factor that results in programmers who use
>> spaces being paid more than programmers who use tabs.
> 
> Could be programmers of certain ages or from different sources of education
> learn one or the other method.
> 
Probably true. Organizations with bigger projects and many programmers
also tend to enforce matters of style because of more eyes on the code.
They also pay better than smaller outfits that have only one or two
people working on code. under Ubuntu the asis-programs package has adapp
to help with just that situation.

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

[lyttlec]

On 06/19/2017 10:18 PM, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:49:12 -0700 (PDT), frankmanning@earthlink.net
> declaimed the following:
> 
>> I remember the whole tabs-vs-spaces thing was a sore subject when I got my first programming job in 1981. To me it's unbelievable that it's still unresolved 36 years later.
> 
> 	It's a significant factor for Python. Tabs are considered equivalent to
> 8-space indent, regardless of how the editor is configured to display them.
> 
> 	Someone using a 4-space display editor /sees/
> 
> <sp><sp><sp><sp>code
> <tab>code
> 
> as being the same level of indent, the Python parser sees 
> 
> <4-sp>code
> <8-sp>code
> 
> hence different indentation levels -- and since Python uses indent level to
> determine the end of code blocks, it will object.
> 
A-HA, that explains why Python programmers make such poor programmers
overall.

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

[lyttlec]

On 06/19/2017 10:19 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> In article <oi997u$efv$2@dont-email.me>, invalid@invalid.invalid says...
>>
>> On 6/18/2017 7:23 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
>>> In article <oi78k3$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.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> For some reason I was thinking of the following video clip from the 
>> Silicon Valley series on HBO:
>>
>> https://youtu.be/SsoOG6ZeyUI
>>
>> This person actually presses the damn space key n times, where n is the 
>> number of spaces. WOW!
>>
>> ;^)
> 
> If the series is all like that I'm glad I never watched it.  There's 
> something _wrong_ with that boy.
> 
> 
You have obviously never had to work in an organization where HR thought
that being able to play lots of games on x-box made good programmers.
Those kids can hit the space bar real fast.

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

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

"Mr. Man-wai Chang" <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> writes:

> 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>

It is said that line prefixes in the form of: TAB* SPC{0,tw-1}
are the best of both world.

This is false.

First, you would need an editor to enforce it.

But it doesn't even solve the first problem of TAB, that their width
varies depending on tools and devices.

The problem is that the sequence of spaces must be of a length less than
the TAB width.  So if you start with tw₀ and have sequences of SPC of
length tw₀-1, and you read/process the file on another system using
tw₁<tw₀, then you will get wrong indentations.

Furthermore, when you allow TAB in source files, you may also use them
to align columns of code, eg. to align variable names in one column, and
types in another column.  And for those TAB in the middle of the lines,
the above rule is helpless, and again, you will get wrong indentations
in other environments, but also IN THE SAME ENVIRONMENT, where the TAB
width is kept constant, as soon as you use a different FONT, notably
when you use non-proportional fonts.

I know that it may seem heritic to use non-proportional fonts for code,
but the reality is that it can work very well, as long as you solve in
the IDE those problems of indentation, both prefix and inside a line.

And, it means the editor will have to compute the layout all the time,
from the parse tree.

Which leads me to the conclusion that the origin of a lot of problems is
the fact that we save "source" files that are used as-is both for
human presentation/edition and for machine processing (compiling).  I
would propose the alternative to save the programs eg. in the form of an
abstract syntactic tree (let's say lisp S-expressions), and each time it
is loaded in an IDE/editor, it would be unparsed into the specific
syntactic and layout/indenting preferences of the programmer; and when
saved, the programmer specific syntax would be parsed, and the
S-expression syntactic tree would be saved to the file.  Machine
processing can use directly these S-expression forms.

-- 
__Pascal J. Bourguignon
http://www.informatimago.com

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

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 22/6/2017 12:48 AM, Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
> Which leads me to the conclusion that the origin of a lot of problems is
> the fact that we save "source" files that are used as-is both for
> human presentation/edition and for machine processing (compiling).  I
> would propose the alternative to save the programs eg. in the form of an
> abstract syntactic tree (let's say lisp S-expressions), and each time it
> is loaded in an IDE/editor, it would be unparsed into the specific
> syntactic and layout/indenting preferences of the programmer; and when
> saved, the programmer specific syntax would be parsed, and the
> S-expression syntactic tree would be saved to the file.  Machine
> processing can use directly these S-expression forms.

Basically, a code beautifier. But some programming languages' CR and LF 
mean something. In the case of COBOL, the first few columns have meanings.

Which makes me believe hard, true SPACE is a simple and better solution. 
Anyway....

-- 
   @~@   Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
  / v \  Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
   ^ ^   (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10)  Linux 2.6.39.3
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

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

[Robert Eachus]

On Wednesday, June 21, 2017 at 8:27:56 AM UTC-4, Simon Wright wrote:

> Dead simple: use the TAB key to tell the editor to align the 
> current/selected lines appropriately; and leave the editor to decide 
> whether to use tab characters (C-I) to implement the indent or just 
> spaces. 

> I agree that you have a problem if your project standards require some 
> weird setting, but it's still a question of customising the editor. 

I'm trying to remember whether I first used untabify in Emacs, but it was sometime in the 1960s.  Untabify doesn't change the appearance of code if the tabs in Emacs match the settings on your display device.  But there are no tabs left in the source file.  If you were programming in a language where tabs in (the code portion of)  source files could make for hours of work, it was a real time saver. (Oh, and you set your tab key to insert three spaces if that was what you wanted.)

A few years later I was working on projects where the checked in files used the project standard.  If you opened one of the files in an editor?  The pretty printer would use your settings.  If you checked the file back in after changes, the first step was to run it through the pretty printer with no errors.  (The stuff that the pretty printer could fix would be fixed automatically.  But if you added access to a library file which was not supposed to be used here?  Bad programmer, no cookie. ;-)

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

[Randy Brukardt]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1080 bytes --]

"Mr. Man-wai Chang" <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:oi5vui$cva$1@dont-email.me...
>
> 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>

So now I finally know why Janus/Ada wasn't more successful in the Ada 
marketplace. :-)

Aside: we started using tabs in our early programs because the storage space 
for source, like everything, was very limited. The early computers we 
developed on had dual floppy drives, one of which was devoted to the OS and 
(if we were lucky) the compiler. The second disk had to have the source 
code, the compilation artifacts, and anything else. (And testing was usually 
accomplished by copying the newly created executable to a testing disk, 
which would usually contain a minimal versionn of the OS as well [which 
saved copying effort].) I did a LOT of disk changing in those days.

                                                         Randy.

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

[Adam Jensen]

On Wed, 21 Jun 2017 18:48:22 +0200, Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:

[snip]
> Which leads me to the conclusion that the origin of a lot of problems is
> the fact that we save "source" files that are used as-is both for human
> presentation/edition and for machine processing (compiling).  I would
> propose the alternative to save the programs eg. in the form of an
> abstract syntactic tree (let's say lisp S-expressions), and each time it
> is loaded in an IDE/editor, it would be unparsed into the specific
> syntactic and layout/indenting preferences of the programmer; and when
> saved, the programmer specific syntax would be parsed, and the
> S-expression syntactic tree would be saved to the file.  Machine
> processing can use directly these S-expression forms.

That's interesting. I am also surprised that the representation of 
"programming languages" and "source code" documents haven't really 
changed much. For example, it seems like a system of XML-based documents 
could represent the essential "program", the documentation, and the 
dependencies, with all of the various layers and dimensions of annotation 
such that various aspects and views could be presented to humans 
(engineers, students, etc.) and automata (compilers, analyzers, etc.). I 
think standards and test-suites, procedures and work-flows, definitions 
and descriptions, examples and explanations, could/should all be 
represented along with the tools and programs in this system of documents 
that would represent a coherent information system.