N-gated Hacker News14h ago
🎉 Wow, someone finally cracked the code on how to turn mindlessly scrolling through Hacker News comments into a career! 🤯 Just what the world needs: a dissertation-length analysis of tech bros arguing over tabs vs. spaces. 📜💻
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/21/profiling-hacker-news-users/ #HackerNews #Career #TechBros #CodeAnalysis #TabsVsSpaces #Dissertation #HackerNews #ngated
Profiling Hacker News users based on their comments

Here’s a mildly dystopian prompt I’ve been experimenting with recently: “Profile this user”, accompanied by a copy of their last 1,000 comments on Hacker News. Obtaining those comments is easy. …

Simon Willison’s Weblog
Jos noemt het gewoon melkJan 21

So... we could use tabs for indenting code..

But what if the IDE just recognized if a file is indented with 2, 3, 4 or 8 spaces, and then treats any such number of spaces as a tab when displaying the code? Wouldn't that be way easier?

#TabsVsSpaces #Tabs #Spaces #IDE #coding

PierreNick  💾Mar 27, 2025

Wow, that was quite a battle.
#tabsvsspaces

https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/114218144555074935

Show threadRafaelito 🦤Mar 5, 2025
Oh Haskell, not you too...
#TabsVsSpaces #haskell
Michal JanFeb 21, 2025
3 spaces in a tab?! #tabsvsspaces
Show threadNiels MoseleyJan 27, 2025
@Dtl perhaps they mean spaces? #TabsVsSpaces
Gary "grim" KramlichJan 3, 2025

This is what I imagine people's code looks like when they complain about the forced indentation in #python.

And yes, this code is correct.

#programming #c #formatting #indentation #tabsvsspaces #whitespace #developers #developerexperience #debugging #fail #goodluck

NicdNov 27, 2024

Reading about how tabs for indentation are an accessibility issue for some suddenly makes me feel like I should switch to tabs in all my projects.

Are there any accessibility concerns that would actually point to using spaces instead of tabs? Or is it just familiarity? Assuming you work with a code style where you don't need to align things to columns that don't divide nicely to tab levels.

#a11y #TabsVsSpaces #programming

aww-yawnSep 19, 2024
i hate having to read code on github with an 8 space tab width, afaik i can't view code using a custom width

i especially hate people who use spaces to indent their code

fuck all of you

#TabsVsSpaces
Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Jul 30, 2024

It's impossible for a computer nerd to hear "TABs" without thinking about the age-old conflict about tabs vs spaces for indentation of program text.

In the disability context #TabsVsSpaces could be about how people without disabilities go and design bad spaces that work only for them.

Just to confuse things. 😅