Dear people who complain about spending a whole night to find a tiny syntax error; Every time I read one of your rants, I feel like a part of me dies.

As a developer, your job is to create elegant optimized rivers of data, to puzzle with interesting algorithmic problems, to craft beautiful mappings from user input to computer storage and back.

You should strive to write code like a Michelangelo, not like a house painter.

You're arguing about indentation or getting annoyed by a project with braces on the same line as the method name. You're struggling with semicolons, misplaced braces or wrongly spelled keywords.

You're bitching about the medium of your paint, about the hardness of the marble -- when you should be lamenting the absence of your muse or the struggle to capture the essence of elegance in your work.

In other words:

Fix your fucking mindset, and fix your fucking tools. Don't fucking rant about your tabs and spaces. Stop fucking screaming how your bloated swiss-army-knife text editor is soooo much better than a purpose-built IDE, if it fails to draw something red and obnoxious around your fuck ups.

Thanks.

Spaces or tabs? - Semicolons!

"Tabs or spaces?"
"Hot dogs."
- Kuwaddo

Spaces or tabs?

Hotdog FTW!!

Starting to feel that devRant is a really nice place to hang out.

Even though we have differences in languages (C#, PHP, JavaScript, JAVA), culture (semi brackets, tabs and spaces) and tools (Sublime, vim, nano, Atom) but we strive to be a better coder by encouraging one another or ranting to blow some steam.

Like seriously guys, you guys are awesome! It feels that I am becoming more human by visiting devRant (or maybe I'm turning into AI).

The illusive software engineer

Anyone looking for something interesting to do???

Step 1) understand how basic circuitry works on a bread board nothing too fancy. ( Implement NAND, AND, ADDER, SUBTRACTOR)

Step 2) learn about microprocessors and how OS works

Step 3) learn assembly

Step 4)write a basic assembler and understand how loaders and linkers works !

Step 5) write a kernel with very basic features like memory management and process management and some drivers for IO

Step 5) write an emulator for some simple systems .! ex chip-8.

Step 6) read about compiler theory and automata

Step 7) write a basic Python interpreter that compiles (not interpreter) to native assembly.

Step 8) implement TCP stack .

Step 9) learn as much as u can about complexity measurement ), data structures and algorithms using C or C++ it's very important ( familiarity with pointers and thus computer memory )

Step 10) learn any high level language of choice like Python or Ruby.

Step 11) stop debating over tabs vs spaces , emacs vs vim , angular vs vue, php vs Python , OOps vs procedular vs functional ( just know about all of them and when to use but don't fucking debate over which one is superior )..

Step 12) live happily and be healthy.

My interviews to hire a Junior Dev will begin this week. Here's how its gonna go down.

Me: Star Trek or Star Wars?

My Supervisor: WTF? How is that relevant?

Human Resources: Let's see what he says.

Applicant: Battlestar Galactica

Me: Nice. I can deal with that.

Me: Tabs or spaces when indenting your code?

Supervisor: ... ?

Human Resources : ...

Applicant: Spaces.

Me: GTFO you imbecile! Next!

This morning Google asked me to come away from a search and into this dark portal to begin its underground recruiting process w/ me. Humbled += Intrigued.

This is a rant because they also gave me a deadline and I have other deadlines, Google!

But the REAL question is: tabs or spaces, Google?

I've had my share of incompetent coworkers. In order of appearance:

1. A full stack dev. This one guy never, and I mean NEVER uses relationships in their tables. No indexing, no keys, nada. Couple of months later he was baffled why his page took ten seconds to load.

2. The same dev as (1). Requirement was to create some sort of "theme" feature for a web app. Hacked it by putting !important all over the place.

3. The same dev again. He creates several functions that if the data exists returns a view, and if it doesn't, "echo '0'". No, not return 0 or return false or anything, but fucking echo. This was PHP. If posted a rant about this a few months ago.

4. Same dev, has no idea what clean code is. No, not just reusable functions, he doesn't even get indenting right. Some functions have 4 spaces, some 2 tabs, some 6 tabs! And this is inside the same function. God wait until he tries Python...

5. Same dev now suggests that he become the PM. GM approves (very small company). Assigns me to travel to a client since they needed "technical assistance about the API". Was actually there to lead a UAT session.

Intermezzo, that guy went from fullstack dev to PM to sales (yes, one who calls clients to offer products) to business development, to product analyst in the span of two years.

After a year and a half there, I quit.

6. New company, a "QA engineer" who also assumes the role as the product owner. Does absolutely no tests other than "functional tests" in which he NEVER produces any form of documentation. Not even a set of test cases. He goes by "intuition".

7. Same guy as (6), hands me requirements for a feature. By "hands me" I mean he did that verbally. No spec documents, no slack chat, no Trello card. I ended up writing it as a card in Trello. Fast forward to the due date, he flips out because that wasn't what he wanted. Showed him the card. He walked away, without thinking of a solution how this mess should be handled.

Despite all this, I really don't want him (6&7) to leave the company. The devs get really stressed out at this job and he does make a really good person to laugh with/at.

love this app.
love the new algo.
love this community.

oh... rant? this is a place to rant?

fml.
tabs. or spaces? tabs! tabs.

Where dafuq is the tabs or spaces?!?!?

They are trying to teach people to code... But they don't use any tabs or spaces in their examples. Wtf. You are breeding shit coders.

aslkfjasf. i've spent 12 hours today (and lots more over the past two days) trying to reproduce a bug that my [sort of] coworker insists is present. I haven't seen any proof of it anywhere, let alone steps to reproduce it.

I've poured through the code, following all of its tangled noodles of madness from start to fuck-this-shit. I've read and reread the pile of demon excrement so many times i can still read the code when i close my eyes. so. not. kidding.

anyway, the coworker person is getting mad because i haven't fixed the bug after days, and haven't even reproduced it yet. This feature is already taking way too fucking long so I totally don't blame him. but urghh it's like trying to unwind a string someone tied into a tight little ball of knots because they were bored.

but i just figured out why I haven't been able to reproduce it.

the stupid fucking unreliable dipshit ex-"i'm a rockstar and my code rocks"-CTO buffoon (aka API Guy, aka the `a=b if a!=b`loody pointless waste of mixed spaces and tabs) that wrote the original APIs ... 'kay, i need to stop for breath.

The dumbfuck wrote the APIs (which I based the new ones on mostly wholesale because wtf messy?), but he never implemented a very fucking important feature for a specific merchant type. It works for literally every type except the (soon-to-be) most common one. and it just so happens that i need that very specific feature to reproduce this bug.

Why is that one specific merchant type handled so differently? No fucking idea.

But exactly how they're handled differently is why I'm so fking pissed off. It's his error checking. (Some) of his functions return different object types (hash, database object, string, nullable bool, ...) depending on what happened. like, when creating a new gift, it (eventually...) either returns a new Gift object or a string error basically saying "ahhh everything's broken again!" -- which is never displayed, compared against, or recorded anywhere, ofc. Here, the API expects a Hash. That particular function call *always* returns a Hash, no matter what happens in the myriad, twisting, and interwoven branches the code could take. So the check is completely pointless.

EXCEPT. if an object associated with another object associated with the passed object (yep) has a type of 8. in which case, one of the methods in the chain returns a PrintQueue that gets passed back up the call stack. implicitly, and nested three levels in. ofc.

And if the API doesn't get its precious Hash, it exclaims that the merchant itself is broken, and tells the user to contact support. despite, you know, the PrintQueue showing that everything worked perfectly. In fact, that merchant's printer will be happily printing away in the background.

All because type checking is this guy's preferred method of detecting errors. (Raise? what's that? OOP? Nah, let's do diverging splintered-monolithic with some Ruby objects thrown in.)

just.
what the crap.

people should keep their mental diarrhea away from their keyboards.

Anyway. the summary of this long-winded, exhaustion-fueled tirade is that our second-most-loved feature doesn't work on our second-most-common merchant type.

and ofc that was the type of merchant i've been testing on. for days. while having both a [semi] coworker and my boss growing increasingly angry at me for my lack of progress.

It's also a huge feature, and the boss doesn't understand that. (can't or won't, idk)

So.
yep.
that's been my week.

...... WHAT A FUCKING BUFFOON!

This codebase reminds me of a large, rotting, barely-alive dromedary. Parts of it function quite well, but large swaths of it are necrotic, foul-smelling, and even rotted away. Were it healthy, it would still exude a terrible stench, and its temperament would easily match: If you managed to get near enough, it would spit and try to bite you.

Swaths of code are commented out -- entire classes simply don't exist anymore, and the ghosts of several-year-old methods still linger. Despite this, large and deprecated (yet uncommented) sections of the application depend on those undefined classes/methods. Navigating the codebase is akin to walking through a minefield: if you reference the wrong method on the wrong object... fatal exception. And being very new to this project, I have no idea what's live and what isn't.

The naming scheme doesn't help, either: it's impossible to know what's still functional without asking because nothing's marked. Instead, I've been working backwards from multiple points to try to find code paths between objects/events. I'm rarely successful.

Not only can I not tell what's live code and what's interactive death, the code itself is messy and awful. Don't get me wrong: it's solid. There's virtually no way to break it. But trying to understand it ... I feel like I'm looking at a huge, sprawling MC Escher landscape through a microscope. (No exaggeration: a magnifying glass would show a larger view that included paradoxes / dubious structures, and these are not readily apparent to me.)

It's also rife with bad practices. Terrible naming choices consisting of arbitrarily-placed acronyms, bad word choices, and simply inconsistent naming (hash vs hsh vs hs vs h). The indentation is a mix of spaces and tabs. There's magic numbers galore, and variable re-use -- not just local scope, but public methods on objects as well. I've also seen countless assignments within conditionals, and these are apparently intentional! The reasoning: to ensure the code only runs with non-falsey values. While that would indeed work, an early return/next is much clearer, and reduces indentation. It's just. reading through this makes me cringe or literally throw my hands up in frustration and exasperation.

Honestly though, I know why the code is so terrible, and I understand:

The architect/sole dev was new to coding -- I have 5-7 times his current experience -- and the project scope expanded significantly and extremely quickly, and also broke all of its foundation rules. Non-developers also dictated architecture, creating further mess. It's the stuff of nightmares. Looking at what he was able to accomplish, though, I'm impressed. Horrified at the details, but impressed with the whole.

This project is the epitome of "I wrote it quickly and just made it work."

Fortunately, he and I both agree that a rewrite is in order. but at 76k lines (without styling or configuration), it's quite the undertaking.

------

Amusing: after running the codebase through `wc`, it apparently sums to half the word count of "War and Peace"

When half your team uses spaces and the other half tabs... Thank god IDE can convert tabs automatically now but now we are arguing if we should use 2 or 4 spaces. It never ends...

Focus on algorithms first and syntax last. Solve problems, then code.
If it uses power, has an I/O interface, and stores code, you can do stuff.
Dont get caught up in the little shit like specific code formatting and who's right or wrong between tabs or spaces. (It should be TABS anyway.)
Don't take shit from anyone.
Be confident not cocky.
Learn GIT as much as you can.
Don't burn out.
Get up and stretch.
Don't argue with your Operating Systems professor about why you shouldn't have to learn Linux.
Don't fall into the "I want to be a game developer" trap. Make your own games on your own time. You won't learn shit at school about it.
9/10 of the real world workforce is who you know, so don't be a dick. Those people might be the difference between Ramen noodles and steak dinner for you.
Charge market competitive rates and set an hourly rate that defines the clientele you deal with.
Don't ever, EVER, do trade or spec work. Free work don't pay the bills. Always start the clock when you're not sleeping, eating, or shitting. If you're emailing, calling, texting, or otherwise interacting with or on behalf of a client, bill them. Don't be a bitch when they decide they don't want to pay you. Get yours. Watch "Fuck You. Pay Me." at least once a month on YouTube.

I'm editing the sidebar on one of our websites, and shuffling some entries. It involves moving some entries in/out of a dropdown and contextual sidebars, in/out of submenus, etc. It sounds a little tedious but overall pretty trivial, right?

This is day three.
I learned React+Redux from scratch (and rebuilt the latter for fun) in twice that long.

In my defense, I've been working on other tasks (see: Alerts), but mostly because I'd rather gouge my freaking eyes out than continue on this one.

Everything that could be wrong about this is. Everything that could be over-engineered is. Everything that could be written worse... can't, actually; it's awful.

Major grievances:
1) The sidebars (yes, there are several) are spread across a ridiculous number of folders. I stopped counting at 20.
2) Instead of icon fonts, this uses multiple images for entry states.
3) The image filenames don't match the menu entry names. at all. ("sb_gifts.png" -> orders); active filenames are e.g. "sb_giftsactive.png"
4) The actions don't match the menu entry names.
5) Menu state is handled within the root application controller, and doesn't use bools, but strings. (and these state flags never seem to get reset anywhere...)
6) These strings are used to construct the image filenames within the sidebar views/partials.
7) Sometimes access restrictions (employee, manager, etc.) are around the individual menu entries, sometimes they're around a partial include, meaning it's extremely difficult to determine which menu entries/sections/subsections are permission-locked without digging through everything.
8) Within different conditionals there are duplicate blocks markup, with duplicate includes, that end up render different partials/markup due to different state.
9) There are parent tags outside of includes, such as `<ul>#{render 'horrific-eye-stabbing'}</ul>`
10) The markup differs per location: sometimes it's a huge blob of non-semantic filthiness, sometimes it's a simple div+span. Example filth: section->p->a->(img,span) ... per menu entry.
11) In some places, the markup is broken, e.g. `<li><u>...</li></u>`
12) In other places, markup is used for layout adjustments, such as an single &nbsp; nested within several divs adorned with lots of styles/classes.
13) Per-device layouts are handled, not within separate views, but by conditionally enabling/disabling swaths of markup, e.g. (if is_cordova_session?).
14) `is_cordova_session` in particular is stored within a cookie that does not expire, and within your user session. disabling it is annoying and very non-obvious. It can get set whether or not you're using cordova.
15) There are virtually no stylesheets; almost everything is inline (but of course not actually everything), which makes for fun layout debugging.
16) Some of the markup (with inline styling, no less) is generated within a goddamn controller.
17) The markup does use css classes, but it's predominately not for actual styling: they're used to pick out elements within unit tests. An example class name: "hide-for-medium-down"; and no, I can't figure out what it means, even when looking at the tests that use it. There are no styles attached to that particular class.
18) The tests have not been updated for three years, and that last update was an rspec version bump.
19) Mixed tabs and spaces, with mixed indentation level (given spaces, it's sometimes 2, 4, 4, 5, or 6, and sometimes one of those levels consistently, plus an extra space thereafter.)
20) Intentional assignment within conditionals (`if var=possibly_nil_return_value()`)
21) hardcoded (and occasionally incorrect) values/urls.

... and last but not least:
22) Adding a new "menu sections unit" (I still haven't determined what the crap that means) requires changing two constants and writing a goddamn database migration.

I'm not even including minor annoyances like non-enclosed ternaries, poor naming conventions, commented out code, highly inefficient code, a 512-character regex (at least it's even, right?), etc.

just.

what the _fuck_

Who knew a sidebar could be so utterly convoluted?

People fighting about spaces vs tabs and I'm here fighting about coding in light theme or dark theme.

Due to popular demand, maybe devRant should add "tabs or spaces" in user's profile? 😒

Tabs or spaces?

A script that replaces <your project's style> with <your preference> whenever you pull and does the opposite just before committing.

Spread code not war

I really need to let this out somewhere...

Why the f...? Srsly.. Why would anyone do that? I'm joining another project. Apparently lead dev has adopted a coding style, where:

1. Every dev writes code however he likes, i.e. no clean-code requirement at all.
2. All services are crud-only. I mean all service classes. All must have those 4 methods; no more, no less.
3. Half of the business logic is inside controllers.
4. Not a single comment... Interfaces, models, etc. -- not a single one.
5. Xmls -- tabs, classes - spaces.
6. Xml schemas are downloaded with each build rather than stored downloaded once and stored locally.
7. I can keep going on and on.

Is it just me or are these some really weird decisions?

Converting spaces to tabs made my file 10% smaller (5050 characters to 4500).

Either good argument against spaces or my code with compulsive indentation disorder.

I love both Tabs and spaces.
I dont understand why to just use tabs only or spaces only.
I use both.

So I've taken over a project, well, not really taken over, we've been hired to add more functionality to a Wordpress site.

I have never seen such a messy code in my life... variables have mixed languages, indentation is a mix of tabs, 2, 3 and 4 spaces, camelcase, snake case, short names, long names. ' and ", no spaces after commas (gotta save those bytes doode)
Almost like it has been copypasted from everywhere.

I think I said 10-15 hours for it. I think I will spend a lot more time tidying up this code.

Hey, look, 3 index files!!
index.php
index__backup.php
index__backup_2.php

I don't dare to look into the CSS or JS, but I know I have to

Professor:
For your first assignment, create a Java application which can do the tasks X, Y and Z but make sure that your output is formatted exactly the same as my two examples in the PDF I've provided. You don't know if these are tabs or spaces? Just pick one and hope for the best. Oh, and don't forget to save all the generated objects in a Collection. The fuck do I know how they should be sorted in there, just make it look the same. Anyway, you can upload your code on our server sometime next week where your program will then be tested. Good luck.

PS: All my presentations are written in Comic Sans. I heard you kids love that shit.

Code fuckup day or what?! After two weeks where I wasn't on my project and a co-worker handled it, I came back to my project and reviewed what he had done so far.
Me: "I don't understand how this new code part here can work?"
Him: "Uhm, actually, it doesn't, somehow."
Me: "..."
Then he had checked in his stuff with spaces while the whole project is with tabs. And variables that were used in a different way, but still under the old name, now completely misleading. Bypassing existing infrastructure and defines with "just for this case" hacks. But the best was tracking higher level state by peeking into lower level data buffers, even pulling out their data definitions into global header files - instead of using proper states in the higher layer itself.
NOT! IN! MY! FUCKING! PROJECT!!!
So I spent the day cleaning up the shit to fight off software rot right in the beginning.

I don't use either tabs or spaces. I backspace a line and press Enter... 😂

Tabs or spaces, and why?

When working with really annoying devs that I know feel strongly about using either spaces or tabs, I sometimes "accidently" uses the opposite indent style when commiting.

Who the hell thought that spaces OR tabs for indentation was an option?
For Spaghetti Monster's sake. An space is to separate words, one at a time. Tabs are for indents.
PERIOD
.

The battle of tabs vs. spaces or under_score vs. camelCase is never gonna end is it?

I know I'm gonna catch heat here but if you insist on using vim or emacs on any OS that is in GUI mode just know I think you are mental... I get it you have shortcuts but so do sublime, atom or vs code. Plus intellisense.

Don't get me wrong I started with vim and have a special place in my heart but I know people only use it to beat their chests.

And just so everyone knows a little about me:

Spaces>tabs
Vim>emacs>nano
Linux>windows>macOS
I hate JavaScript
And mtn dew is a better drink than coke or Pepsi.

Look, I don't really mind much whether you use tabs or spaces. But for FUCK'S sake, for the LOVE OF FUCK:

IF YOU USE TABS, DON'T TRY TO LINE UP PARTS OF YOUR CODE WITH SOMETHING ON THE LINE ABOVE BECAUSE IT WILL GO TO SHIT WHEN SOMEONE ELSE HAS A DIFFERENT TAB WIDTH SETTING.

YOU DRIBBLING FUCKPUPPET.

Weather Report: Thunderstorms and heavy downpour

Stuck at office wondering whether I really hate tab more than spaces that it wore out OR is it that I use it way too much.
PS: Currently fixing the tab button

While I prefer tabs over spaces for indentation, I usually don't mind using spaces as this is often decided project-wide(or even company-wide) by powers out of my reach and the people also normally decide to intend by the reasonable 4 spaces.
However, now I am working on a project with 2 spaces indentation and oh boy, what a pain it is to write any nested code.. am I really the only one with this problem?

Did anyone else see this today? Are you team spaces or team tabs?

1. Kill every last bastard who uses spaces instead of tabs or anyone who thinks that's better.

2. Break every text editor that has the option of transforming beautiful code tabs into hideous spaces.

3. Make a statically typed language that's good enough to replace JS and the pile of hacks we have in the web today.

tabs or spaces?

TABS OR SPACES?
It doesn't matter what you use, but use the ome you can stand with.
DONT FUCKING EVER BULLY ONE BECAUSE HE'S NOT USING YOUR "STANDARD"
Try to have some good discussion why you should use tabs or spaces and let other opinions matter. They may have some good reason for it.
PS I'm using spaces because it wont fuck up my Code if i change the OS (Windows<->Linux Server)

I never understood the ‚space vs tabs‘ war ...
Tabs can do everything that spaces can plus more:
* look the same as spaces, but its width is configurable (at least in a decent editor)
* the safe space (1 byte vs 3 or 4)
* you can decrease the intendation leven with one bsckspace keypress in every(!) editor.

So the winner can only be tabs? Why would I even limit myself with spaces?

I dont wanna start a flame war, just curious what you guys (especially the spaces lovers) think about it

I like my log messages to indicate automatically where in the code something happened, so that I can easily identify where a message originated from while tracking down problems.

In C/C++ this is nice and easy - write a logging routine, wrap it in macros for the different log levels and have that automatically output __FILE__, __LINE__ etc.

I wanted to do something similar in NodeJS, as I'd found myself manually writing the file name in the log message and then splitting functionality out into new files and it became a mess.

The only way I found to be able to do this was to create an "Error" object and access the "stack" member of it. This is a string containing a stack backtrace, suitable for writing to console/file. I just wanted the filename/line/routine.

So I ended up splitting the string into lines, then for each of the lines, trimming the surrounding spaces (or tabs?), and parsing them to see if the stack entry is inside my logger module. The first entry outside of that module must therefore be the thing that called it, so I then parse out the routine or object and method, filename and line number.

It's a lot of clumsy work but the output is pretty neat. I just wish it were simpler!

WHY DOES POWERAPPS ADD TABS AS 3 SPACES?!?! 2 OR 4. PICK ONE.

Why should I use tabs or spaces? Convince me of your side. :)

! War

I hate tabs to space, yep i hate it, nobody could ever give me a good reason to use spaces over tabs
(yes i want to have differend tab sizes on differend Plattforms/environments, my buddys all use 4 or even 6 as tab size, i only use 2. With tabs can everbody got his/her own size without reformating the whole code and driving diff crazy @all lines changed!!!111onehundredeleven)

I know this topic is tired and this isn't supposed to be a pure "REEEE SPACES BAD" kinda rant but I still don't understand why people would ever use spaces over tabs for indentation. I'm genuinely curious so please give me your arguments in favor of spaces because I just don't understand

So here's my position:
Tabs are objectively better than spaces in every single way
(I know that IDEs also do some of these for spaces, more on that later)
1. They are typed with one key press
2. They can be removed with one keypress
3. They allow for individually configurable width (some people prefer 2 and some 4 width)
4. They take up less memory (kinda irrelevant, but still)
5. You can properly navigate your code using the arrow keys which is much faster than using the mouse while typing
6. You don't have problems with accidentially having one too much or one too little
7. You don't have problems when copy pasting or moving code around (e.g. refactoring)
8. Code is much easier to select with the mouse, and
9. it's much easier clicking the right spot with the mouse where you want to continue typing, which is often at the start of a line

Apart from specific alignment, where spaces are fine (but which also almost never comes up), I just can't see a single thing where spaces are better at. So much so that most IDEs have to *pretend* that they're tabs when typing and removing them. It's so ironic yet people still defend it and big companies still use them.

I feel like I'm going mad 😨

I don't think there is anything more painful than seeing some programmers writing badly formatted code.
I mean how can anyone use a single space or completely inconsistent spaces and tabs.
What is more painful is that you cannot scream at them because you don't wanna be an A-Hole trying to force your methods to others.

I actually do have something to rant about!

The people I've decided to work with... are complete and utter fools. They don't want to keep updated with new practices and merely talk about awesome stuff... Let me elaborate.

The first person is someone I spent really many hours just writing with, I've helped him build on his personal project, which has now become our project (which I've done most of the work on now). He keeps writing about things that aren't fucking relevant for the current task - furthermore, he completely refuses to use any type of collaboration software in order to keep an eye on tasks we want to, and already have completed. He likes Git but doesn't provide helpful git messages, sometimes even stuff like 'forgot this'.. never any freaking description of what's actually been done! Not even after agreeing it should be done, he just doesn't understand what a helpful message is apparently.
I might be a bit special regarding wanting to follow practices, but how the fuck do you make any amount of money by being so ignorant!? He was a WP 'developer' a while ago, and has since changed to JS and are using a framework which he doesn't understand - he can't even remember what the documentation states.

So why do I 'work' with him? He knows a lot of phrases he's read in books, blogs, and the likes. That makes him really inspirational and positive and he really wants to become successful(like me!). But over the last few months, I've realized how bad he is at programming - he doesn't know basic programming concepts and have a hard time applying any sort of knowledge to his programming. If it's not pre-built, he can't use it, not even if the documentation has specific examples. He barely grasps the concept of binding data to a variable. He wouldn't know how to access it again though, it's just for the sake of binding it to some existing functionality.

The other guy really likes his old style. He hired me to maintain some application. Which has turned out to be a hell of several small tasks he needs to be finished or reworked - with no clear definition of the task. Most of the time, he'll do some initial changes, show the changes to me, vaguely explain what they do (not what he's trying to achieve) and first THEN ask me to do these changes, most often in some files that don't exist (he uses the wrong filenames so I have to guess/ask where the changes need to be made).
To top it all off, old syntax is used and don't get me started on the spaces+tabs for indenting lines... Because I've already added a great ESLint+Prettier conf and everything should be nicely formatted according to pre-defined rules.
But he won't take the time to install some plugins in his editor and I'm left with sometimes buggy, badly formatted code (the code I have to make changes with!) - that's while he several times have agreed that I can do what I want and that he even questions his own ways when looking at my changes which he calls by-the-book.
So why the motherfucking fuck do I keep working with him?

Well, he keeps paying so that's really nice - I haven't been able to properly execute the bigger tasks(which pays more) though, due to a lack of information or some badly written code I couldn't quite figure out how works (at a glance).

He also keeps talking about these new projects he wants to make.. he even has these freaking papers with descriptions and data-structures and we converse really good about these new awesome projects. He also likes cryptocurrencies(which is an interest of mine he has inflamed quite a bit) and lastly, he seems like a genuinely nice guy who I'd like to spend some time with even besides coding and work.

So now I stand here - stuck with people that make me feel like a demi-god or something because I use a git style-guide and ESLint+Prettier with the Airbnb style-guide.

What should I do? I'd really like some remote work and have a desperate need for money... So much so, that I might even have to pick up a fulltime job, in order to save my sorry ass - all because I like speaking with people who just like the thought of programming...

I'm actually quite lonely with my thoughts and they are the two only people I've had some sort of relationship with - who has an invested interest in programming/dev... I really like that, despite having to follow their thoughts as they surely can't follow mine.

Please be my friend or give me some paid work lol.

Also, I've been moving the last couple weeks - those weeks has been the most stressful of my life and have not contributed to my overall wellbeing and relations with people... It's good to be back at the computer again and be reading some devRant though!

Fast quitz:

1. Desktops or Laptops?
2. Windows or Linux?
3. Coke or Pepsi?
4. Instant coffee or regular coffee?
5. Light theme or dark theme?
6. Tabs or spaces?

Let's the hell begin! 😈

Spaces vs tabs has kind of become a non-argument for web tech and the former has won (at least in every place I've worked or observed in open source projects).

Although I don't really care (just stick to one for the same codebase) I don't get why spaces won. Given the argument is mostly about how we like to read code individually, and tab width can be configured per editor while space cannot, why did spaces win?

VS Code, WTF is wrong with your tab stops?
I set to 2 and you still use 4.
I say use spaces for tabs and you still put tabs in my document.
Tab settings by doc type? Not existing or working.

Damn you!
Just work

I know this is utopic, but I've been thinking for a while now about starting an open source platform for figuring out the problems of our society and finding real world, applicable, open source solutions for them.

To give you some more details, the platform should have two interfaces:
- one for people involved in researching, compiling issues into smaller, concrete chunks that can be tackled in the real world, discuss and try to find workable solutions for the issues and so on
- one for the general public to search through the database of issues, become aware of the problems and follow progress on the issues that people started working on

Of course, anyone can join the platform, both as an observer (and have the ability to follow issues they find interesting) and/or contributor (and actually work with the community to make the world a better place in any way they can).

Each area of expertise would have some people that will manage the smaller communities that would build around issues, much like people already do in the open source community, managing teams to focus on the important thins for each issue. (I haven't found a solution for big egos getting in the way yet, but it would be nice if the people involved would focus on fixing stuff in stead of debating about tabs vs spaces, if you know what I mean).

The goal of this project would be to bring together as many people from all kind of fields to actually try to fix this broken society.

It would be even better if it attracted people with money and access to resources (one example off the top of my head being people like Elon Musk) that could help implement the solutions proposed by the community without expecting to gain profit off of it (profit is also acceptable if it is made in a considerate, fair and helpful way, but would not be promoted on the platform).

The whole thing would be voluntary work; no salary, no other commitment than the personal pledge that once someone chooses to tackle something, he/she will also see it trough (or at least do his/her best).

The platform would be something like a mix of real time communication, issue tracker, project management tool and publishing platform.

I don't yet have all the details for how it should all fit together, but if there is something that I would like to start, this is definitely it!

PS: I don't think I can ever do something like this by myself, and I don't really have the time to manage a community of developers to start work on it right now. But if you guys think something like this is something worth your time, I will make time and at least start on defining the architecture and try to turn this into a real project.

If enough people are interested, I will drop any other side projects and do my best to get this into the world!

Thank you for reading :)

Since we're all doing unpopular opinions lately: tabs and spaces are not only interchangeable, but is most readable when mixed on one line.

Instead of 4 spaces or one tab, try 2 spaces, 1 tab, and another space for good measure!

I haven't chimed in on this spaces vs tabs war at all on this platform, mostly because I personally don't care and adapt to my work's/project's conventions, but I just have to put this out there now.

I am honestly so confused about the entire thing since seeing a lot of recent rants on the topic. I was originally conditioned to believe that the majority of devs in the world were FOR spaces over tabs. Thus, whenever I start a project, I default to spaces.

Contrary to that, it seems most devs here (or at least those who enjoy instigating some banter) actually prefer tabs. Now, I recently binged Silicon Valley and can't help but wonder if people around here are simply jumping on that band wagon for the sake of the joke.

Side note: I also thought Vim was more widely used over Emacs but Richard Hendricks asserts otherwise there too.

I know the main arguments for both sides - spaces yield code that looks the same in all editors while tabs produce smaller code. Anybody who argues that spaces are less efficient because you need to physically press the space bar 2/4/8/etc times is just retarded. If soft tabs weren't a thing, I don't think anybody would be on the side of spaces and for that reason I believe that episode in Silicon Valley was just trying to be overdramatized and push peoples' buttons.

All of that being said, I wonder if it's just a generational/field of development thing. Would it be wrong to propose that more older devs in the field of embedded and OS development (using C and the like) are in the spaces party while younger devs perhaps more into application and web dev (Javascript, C#, and shit) are all about tabs? I'm actually fresh out of university, but like I said my preference is spaces, though I don't really care.

I'm actually interested to find out what kind of environments breed these opposing mindsets so what do you guys think?

So, apparently I have start some heated discussions about idiomatic javascript or something.

While it's nice to have standard (and probably a linter), I guess creating an idiomatic javascript is not as easy as creating pythonic code.

IMO the reasons are:

1. Python has Guido van Rossum. The one and only dictator telling us what's right and what's wrong

2. Javasript has airbnb standard, mozilla standard, and some open source standards. Strictly take one of them, and your code will be non idiomatic. Cherry pick some styles and combines the ones that makes more senses for you, and your code become non idiomatic.

3. The language is changing. Very fast. Put your idiomatic code in github, leave it for a while, and it's become non idiomatic. So I don't know, but this kind of code, is idiomatic, but takes some times to understand what's going on

anObject = {someFunction, someOther, someKey: someValue};

At the end, I guess the point of those standards are providing one correct way to do something. The consistencies.

I understand it is an important aspect. But this started to be religion...

Like someone really get offended if you doesn't end your code with semicolon.

In that sense, why the javascript foundation (or something) allow a statement to not being end up with semicolon at all?

Also, this is a never ending debate: tabs or spaces? two spaces or four spaces?

This is going to be ' ruby' vs 'python' thing again. I don't know about nowadays ruby, but back then they said the biggest advantage of ruby is you can approach something by using different ways and they are all corrects. Not sounds so idiomatic for me.

Ah yes, I heard almost everyone love javascript and hate php despite the fact that devRant was built on top of php stack. Just FYI, that much hated inconsistent language has something named PSR. And how about javascript? I never heard JSR or ESR. Just ES5, ES6 and in near future ES7... Which are simply provide new ways to do things, add more enthrophy to this already-chaotic-universe.

Also. In vim, how the hell do you define basic indentation based on file type? I really think 4 spaces is just beautiful. But apparently, only python coders think the same. Rest of mortal out there use 2 spaces. Somehow it hurts my eyes, yet it is the standard right?

goddammit... looks like I'll spend more time learning about what idiomatic javascript really is, debating with some zealot thinking they worship the one and only true standard, rather than solving the actual problem...

Option to add on profile, tabs or spaces.
Windows, Mac, or Linux
Same line { or next line
4 space tab or 8 space...
Also, I think it would be cool to introduce polls. Simple "Should I take a) a job with x or b) a job with y" and people could click a or b in addition to comments.

Tabs or Spaces??

Tabs or spaces?

Tabs or Spaces, which do you pick?

the most important question...

@dfox tabs or spaces?

Do you guys use tabs or spaces? Just curious tho.

So, tabs or spaces?
What do you use? Tabs for minimal filesize or space for consistency?

4 or 2? Tabs or spaces?
Fight!

About the ongoing battle of tabs vs spaces, there is an option in most text editors to convert tabs to spaces ( if you press tab it insert a certain number of spaces ). Use that and you will be fine.
Also if you are contributing to other projects which could be using tabs, there are plugins that will detect if the indentation is spaces or tabs and when you press tab automatically inserts spaces or tabs accordingly

!rant Just an observation. There is a lot of discussion about syntax. Should it be tabs or spaces or should the opening bracket be on the same line as the method/function. There is 101 languages and standards. Syntax varies and you just can't learn it all.

What is more important? Result or the aesthetics? If you come into a project you adapt. You use the syntax everyone else is using. If you are a part of starting a project you agree on rules of engagement and stick to them so the team works at maximum efficiency. If you lead a project you define the rules by adapting to your teams habits. Because in the end it's the working product we are after.

Golden mean.

Tabs or Spaces?

Don't fall into frivolous arguments about tabs/spaces or brace style. It doesn't matter. But please make sure your code is at least formatted in a *consistent* manner - everyone else that reads your code will thank you.

What's better tabs or spaces ?
I don't know the implications of each.

tabs spaces oses languages what about using I instead of counter or index as a variable for for loop

Let's start this war: Tabs or Spaces

Seriously: spaces or tabs?

I'm new to Python and have been using PyCharm. I like it. I've tried just about every IDE on the market now excluding maybe a couple of the ones who don't have free versions and I always end up back to Pycharm.

I like how it's strict about formatting. My opinion it builds good habits. I watch a lot of tutorials on youtube among other things and I'm learning slowly but still I getting there.

My conclusion is that their seems to be a complete lack of consistency in the Python community regarding PEP and formatting standards. One person does it this way. Another does it that way. Makes it extremely frustrating when trying to learn because you have all these people doing things slightly different.

One guy says dont use camelCase another says yes. Granted some of these tutorial are a couple of years old and I know things change but I can't imagine it changes that much from 2 to 3 yeah but when you can't even be consistent with your spacing of your print functions or comments it's like nails on a chalkboard.

And thats just the beginning. I'm a tabs guy some are spaces. That's a whole other rant or whatever. Hardly the point really. Lots of different inconsistencies but I'm running out of characters.

Maybe im just not finding good videos. They all act like they know what they are doing and to an extent I suppose they do.

It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out their like they do ready to be scrutinized so you have to at least have a clue of what your doing. Some of these people have 10s of thousands of subs and I find myself picking apart every little thing they are doing and find many times they are teaching wrong standards. At least that's how I see it from the little experience I have now.

I'm just beyond frustrated and would appreciate any advice that a person wants to give. Keep in my I'm new and may just be misguided so try not to be to harsh if I've drawn an incorrect conclusion.

It's time to reconcile the religious war with a compromise: How about we use spaces for lines with indent <= 8 chars and tabs for deeper indents?

Or maybe tabs in all functions returning strings and spaces in all other functions?

During a training reading a Readme file:

Copy paste the following code in the editor.
NOTE: REPLACE ALL SPACES WITH TABS OR IT WILL BREAK

I know there is this huge argument about whether to use tabs or 4 spaces and while I'm on neither side, just sitting there using tabs, in this new project I'm FORCED to use a 1 space indentation and no line breaks in Android layout XML files format.

I sat there for about 10 minutes trying to wrap my head around d this absurd specification they agreed upon with the client. The code looks SHIT and every time I copy some beautifully formatted reference code into this project it turns into a piece of unreadable garbage.

But since I'm just a part-timer and the senior developer working on this project for some years now is much more experienced than me, I'm hesitant to criticise it more than I already did.

Maybe I'll start arguing with industry standards and the improvement for new developer to read our code...

Tabs or spaces?