I use tabs because I prefer 4-space indents and others might prefer 2-space indentation or the gross and unacceptable 6-space indentation.

If more than one person is working on a code base, there will likely be more than one preference, and with tabs everyone gets to just set their own tab width.

Yes, even the 3-space savages.

That's because these programmers are getting paid by the character.

This is also why Java dev pays so well.

Seven semicolons are the correct way to do indentation (it even alliterates):

int main
(void) {
;;;;;;;printf("like this\n"); }

Is this some kind of python meme I'm too C++ to understand?

Now, I'm completely willing to start a war about { going on the next line.

Tabs make more sense because that’s exactly what they’re for, indents. Ignoring how it looks, which makes more semantic sense for an indent, or ? You wouldn’t use a bunch of spaces to indent a paragraph, so why would you use it to indent code?

But you get smaller files with Tabs: https://www.madskristensen.net/blog/performance-of-tabs-vs-spaces-in-html-files ;)

Is there any actual advantage to using spaces? I have seen similar posts for a while and as a tab user I don't understand why they are any better than just a tab

I'd imagine it's because people who use spaces are either further in their career in average (because the modern programming ecosystem in general uses tabs so new devs are more likely to only know that) or they're just more serious about software development because the kind of person to die on that hill is also the kind of person who is very obsessive about other things as well.

[ ] tabs [ ] spaces [x] why would I even care, I press tab and the editor puts either a tab or a number of spaces, couldn't care less...

Someone here made a longer explanation in a blog post why it's that way and what this corresponds to: https://evelinag.com/blog/2017/06-20-stackoverflow-tabs-spaces-and-salary/index.html

I'd assume this is a product of space users being older and thus earning more, but that is wild speculation.

For your viewing pleasure. https://youtu.be/SsoOG6ZeyUI

So the two camps are:

spaces: who want to be able to have accidental fractional indentation and so they can force anyone who may read their code in the future to see the indentation at the size that they intended.

tabs: who want consistent bug-resistant and logical formatting, and for any future reader to decided for themselves thier own personal best indentation size.

A possible explanation: people who want it their way at the expense of others are more likely to choose spaces, and are more likely to feel at home at a company that does exactly that in order to extract more profit from thier victi... customers.

Casualty / coincidence

Edit: causality/coincidence

But what about their DTF?