Tabs are objectively better than spaces
gomakethings.com
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Yesterday, I shared some spicy takes. A few were particularly controversial—most notably, that I correct Gif the correct way (with a soft G)—but I also got a lot of emails asking me to elaborate on a few of them. Today, I wanted to talk about how tabs are objectively better than spaces. This won’t take long. Tabs let you define how big you want each indent to be, and spaces do not.

I am not, it’s easy to find examples where tabs first then spaces breaks down.

JackbyDev
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31Y

That example is using tabs for both indentation and alignment. The article you linked even says not using tabs for alignment is a solution.

  • Do not use tabs for alignment. In such case given example should look like:
fun foo x =
--->let val abs = if x > 0
--->              then x
--->              else -x
--->in
--->--->(* ... *)
--->end

Yes, but keep reading. That strategy is a pain to maintain especially across editors.

JackbyDev
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11Y

Many styles are difficult to maintain, I’m not saying it is or isn’t. I’m saying that using only spaces for alignment will not let your alignment get messed up with various tabstops settings.

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