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0 pointskazinator6y ago0 comments

It's not clear that tabs are the best technical solution. For starters, why can't there be a text editor (or text editor feature) of rendering the leading spaces of a line with a flexible size, so that the data itself doesn't have to be massaged to achieve the effect?

If some visually impaired people insist that 80 column punched cards are the best for them, do we switch to that? Or maybe we should all work with Braille or Morse Code? I'm not convinced by lowest-common-denominator arguments. Suppose that no code representation method suits every possible programming minority; do we give up and not code at all?

Here is a counterargument: I'm not switching to idiotic tabs even if doing so saves puppies from being drowned. Not caring is a perfectly valid argument.

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em-bee6y ago

very good point. there is certainly room for improvement. a lot of room actually.

im fact it irks me every time if i have to change the indentation of code already written just because i changed the nesting depth. it causes changes in lines of code that haven't actually changed, and messes up the diff as well as things like git blame...

we can imagine a solution by looking at lisp for example. its syntax makes it possible to store the code without any indentation at all. in fact even without any linebreaks (let's ignore comments for now) and rely entirely on an editor to present the code in a readable format.

this should be possible with other languages too. especially if we design them with that goal in mind.

RomanBob6y ago

well said. so many of these crippleocracy arguments are cropping up these days, with the poster virtue signalling.

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