Tabs -vs- Spaces: Tabs should have won.

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 15:53, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn
>> […]  I do not understand how you can consider using a non-fixed-width
>> font in programming "a real pleasure" as many them show a lot of
>> ambiguities in source code.  Take for example the lowercase "l" (el) vs.
>> the capital "I" (ai) vs. the "|" (pipe) character, or the "0" (zero) vs.
>> the capital "O" (oh) character in Arial.
> 
> The ambiguity has never been an issue for me. In the unlikely event
> that an l (el) is in the place of a pipe, the code won't compile and
> I'll get an error on the line in question. Though that has never
> actually happened: the IDE is double-checking way before the code gets
> to the compiler. Zero vs. O (oh), I've never had this issue either and
> even if one key was hit in place of the other (they are close by) then
> either the IDE or compiler would catch it, or it would result in a
> minor bug in a text string.
> 
> It simply isn't an issue.

Apparently it is *has not been* an issue for *you* *yet*.  There are 
languages (like Python) that are compiled just-in-time.  Besides, neither an 
IDE nor a compiler can (always) recognize that foo["b0r"] is not foo["bOr"] 
(which really is not a far-fetched example as the O and zero keys are 
adjacent to each other on in keyboard layouts).  You do not want such an 
ambiguity to bite you later.

-- 
PointedEars

Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail. / Please do not Cc: me.