Programming Polls

Tabs are better than just for blind users.

Most users want an indentation size of 4 so for the rest of this comment we'll just call that one the default size.

Tabs

Tabs at default/any size

• Blind people don't care about the tab size, just that there's tabs.
• Keyboard users don't care about the tab size, just that there's tabs (because it's only one key to change indentation levels).
• Manual formatters don't care about tab size, just that there's tabs (because you can't mess anything up inside the tab itself, but you can with space indentation)

Tabs at larger than default size

• Verbose language (e.g. FactoryFactoryFactory) users tend to care about tab size and put the tab size up to 8 to make it easier to read. These users tend to use tabs because it's fewer keys.
• Zen mode users (AKA visual overload users) tend to use larger tab sizes

Tabs at smaller than default size

• Users with poorer vision who increase the size of the code while trying to fit as much on the display as possible

Tabs at variable sizes

• Users who move their code between a laptop display and a larger display
• Users who use terminal splitting / tiling window managers (as a code viewport becomes more squashed, the indentation adjusts to fit the same amount of code in the viewport)

Spaces

Spaced indentation at smaller than default size

• Users are unaware of reasons why to use tabs
• Users coding in C99 on an 80 character wide shell

Spaced indentation at default size

• Working on a project or using a style guide created by developers who originally coded in C99 on an 80 character wide shell

Mixed Indentations

• Maniacs, and those coding in whitespace