tabs do WHAT?

[Gerrit Holl]

Brett g Porter wrote on 949330467:
> 
> "Thomas Wouters" <thomas at xs4all.net> wrote in message
> news:20000131153329.B19725 at xs4all.nl...
> > """
> > Tabs are 8 characters, and thus indentations are also 8 characters.
> > There are heretic movements that try to make indentations 4 (or even 2!)
> > characters deep, and that is akin to trying to define the value of PI to
> > be 3.
> >
> > Rationale: The whole idea behind indentation is to clearly define where
> > a block of control starts and ends.  Especially when you've been looking
> > at your screen for 20 straight hours, you'll find it a lot easier to see
> > how the indentation works if you have large indentations.
> >
> ...except that studies of actual human programmers say otherwise. From Steve
> McConnell's "Code Complete" (pp 409-410):
> "The same study ['Program Indention and Comprehensibility', Miaria, et al,
> 1983] found...[t]he lowest comprehension scores were achieved on programs
> that were not indented at all. The second lowest were achieved on programs
> that used six-space indentation. The study concluded that two to four space
> indentation was optimal. Interestingly, many subjects in the experiment felt
> that the six-space indentation was easier to use than the smaller
> indentations, even though their scores were lower."
> 
> The original study was printed in the Nov 1983 Communications of the ACM.

Tell Linus!

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