Maël Nison arcanis

The Indentation Nightmare

If there is something that I have never fully understood during the last years of learning programming languages, it's the chaos around indentation. Some says that you should use spaces, some others says that you should use tabs. And even if you're willing to use spaces, there will be multiple schools, some people saying that you should use two spaces, instead of four for some other developers.

Why is it such a mess ? I don't even see why it is such a debatable topic : indentation is made by tabs. Alignment is made by spaces. Nothing more, nothing less. Want to know why ?

Spaces have a fixed length

Spaces are usefull because they have a fixed length. It means that it should be used when you have to align code. What's aligning ? Take this piece of code :

Beautiful scripts

(based on "Beautiful Days", by Venus :)

I wish I had let
Weak maps and spread
I wish I had const
And minimal classes

I wish I had rest
Pragma and tails

	/**
	* @class foo
	*/

	var foo = function () {

	/**
	* Stop, hammertime.
	* @member foo
	* @returns 42

	/**
	* @class
	*/

	var foo = function () {

	/**
	* Stop, hammertime.
	*
	* @memberOf foo#

	/**
	* @mixin foo
	*/

	var foo = {

	/**
	* Does something.
	*/

	// Chaque fonction est un constructeur
	var Foo = function ( ) { this.bar = 'hello world'; };
	var instance = new Foo( );
	console.log( instance.bar ); // "hello world"

	// Chaque fonction possède un prototype
	var Foo = function ( ) { };
	Foo.prototype.bar = 'hello world';
	var instance = new Foo( );
	console.log( instance.bar ); // "hello world"

	#!/usr/bin/env sh

	# Usage :
	# $> sudo set-python-version 2; python -V
	# Python 2.7.2
	# $> sudo set-python-version 3; python -V
	# Python 3.2.2

	python=$(which python)
	pythonX=$(which python$1)

	<?php

	class StringRandomizer {

	public function process( $text ) {
	return preg_replace_callback('/\{(((?>[^\{\}]+)\|(?R))*)\}/x', array( $this, 'replace' ), $text );
	}

	public function replace( $text ) {
	$text = $this->process( $text[ 1 ] );

	PonyOS
	http://www.ponyos.org/

	Blizzard - Starcraft : Warhound is back
	https://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/9369235

	Atlassian - JIRA Jr
	http://www.atlassian.com/jirajr/

	Lambda The Ultimate - Migration to Facebook

	MyEventManager.prototype.bootstrap = function ( ) {
	var self = this;
	this.listen( 'myEvent', function ( ) {
	self.myEventListener( );
	} );
	};

	// ---

	var array = [ 1, 2, 3 ];