> Tabs can become a nightmare if you happen to be forced to use a tool (e.g. a > debugger) that uses a different tab width than your editor/IDE. For example, > many tools use a tab width of 8 (which is the default tab width for HTML) > which is far too wide for indentation.
8 tab width is far too wide. I agree. This is why most tools allow for configuring the width. This is a fault of the tool, not the character. > This is not an issue as long as you stay within your IDE, but then you can > configure you IDE to convert tabs into spaces automatically. How many spaces though? 4 spaces? 2? I've even talked to a highly skilled programmer who use 3 spaces. You're going to have a git problem if people start converting your codebase to different space counts and don't convert back to tabs. > "Tabs are configurable for personal preference" \- Some people seriously seem > to suggest that within the same team different people use different > indentation widths by configuring different tab widths. To me this is just a > crazy idea. As crazy as different people using different color themes for their IDE.
