Not only would I dislike having to consider what sort of horizontal space to insert this time, I don't want to have to hit the space bar umpteen times for correct alignment—not when my text editor is quite good about managing this with the tab key.

Copy-and-paste. ☺

For indentation, all good editors offer auto-indentation. One keypress and it's indented correctly.

I'll keep using spaces. It's simpler for me, never seems to cause trouble, and is presently the accepted thing to do. (Besides, the thought of someone viewing my code with an eight-space indent? It's enough to make me cringe!)

Why do you care?

That comment syntax is pretty, and I would love a programming language or an editor with inherent support for that. I can't say I can recommend it with modern tools, however, mostly because of the issue mind and you raise.

Isn't that something of a pain in the rear, though? I use the tab key to insert a large amount of horizontal space. Sometimes I'm indenting; sometimes I'm lining up columns. Not only would I dislike having to consider what sort of horizontal space to insert this time, I don't want to have to hit the space bar umpteen times for correct alignment—not when my text editor is quite good about managing this with the tab key.

I'll keep using spaces. It's simpler for me, never seems to cause trouble, and is presently the accepted thing to do. (Besides, the thought of someone viewing my code with an eight-space indent? It's enough to make me cringe!)

I think this is a minor issue compared to the utility of tabs otherwise, but it is an bona fide issue.

if you use tabs to make the column for the comments, then that will fail for various tab sizes and line lengths.

That's why you shouldn't use tabs to make columns. I said this in the post: Use spaces for columns. Only use tabs for indents.

if foo:         # some inline, but
        bar()   # multi-line comment

(with a tab to indent the second line) will only look correct if tab stops are set to 8. if you use tabs to make the column for the comments, then that will fail for various tab sizes and line lengths.

so, now you've got the worst of both worlds. tab stops must be set to the size that the file was edited with in order to look correct, and you've got to set that size. simply putting spaces in makes it so that people can't adjust the indentation to suit them, but that there is no ambiguity with further columns.

further, if someone does edit your file and uses spaces for indentation, then your columns again break when the tab stop is changed. you're better off adopting a concrete layout in the file, and any people who edit it need to follow a certain style. tabs don't solve all of the problems, therefore they just add complexity.

Things like this:

#define this 8
#define longerthis 5

If someone has a longer tab stop when they format the code, the values may not line up for users of smaller tab stops.

Now, let's say you work on a project with 500 other programmers. Do you have time to track down each offender and give them an earful for using tabs and spaces inappropriately? Even if you did, it wouldn't matter---they'll just do it again. While it may be technically superior to argue ``tabs-for-indentation-and-spaces-for-alignment,'' it doesn't scale in practice.

The only way to stop the insanity is to tell everyone to use all spaces all the time. This is simpler to grasp conceptually. Even the dumbest programmer can understand what ``all-spaces'' means, sort of. They'll probably still leave trailing whitespace all over and maybe the occasional tab, but the result is still much cleaner than an inconsistent mix of tabs and spaces.

Using tabs preserves the semantic structure (ie. indent level) whereas spaces are just a lazy way of getting something that maybe looks roughly right at the time. It's exactly the same as when people screw up MS Word or HTML documents by including low level character formatting rather than defining styles. I hope no one is going to argue that because a mixture of styles and low level formatting is bad the answer is to put in abominations like <b><font size=+1> everywhere instead of writing <h1> !

int x = MyFunction(int a,
                   int b,
                   int c)

(I don't know if that will turn out to be formatted okay, but you probably get the gist -- the "ints" in the parameter list should all be lined up).

In this case, it seems spaces should be used, otherwise the ints won't line up; i.e., if I set my tab width to 8 and line them up with tabs (and an extra space or two or three, if necessary), it won't look right to you if your tab width is only 4.

So is that to say that it's best to use tabs except in cases of aligning parameter lists (or, in the case of Objective-C, aligning parameter names according to colons)?