Please verify!!

[Andrew Berg]

On 2/24/2012 6:20 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> Opinions need to be informed to be better than useless. By definition 
> newbies don't have the experience to have informed opinions.
I thought I had implied that I meant informed opinions, but apparently not.

> There are many times that we can't afford to sit on the fence. Lacking 
> experience to decide between spaces and tabs, we can't just say "I won't 
> use either", or "I'll use both" (unless you do so in separate files). So 
> how can we make a decision?
> 
> The usual way is to listen to others, who do have the experience to make 
> a decision (even if only imperfectly). But you've just told us off for 
> passing on our experience/opinions to newbies, so in effect you're saying 
> that people shouldn't learn from the experiences of others.
I don't mean that no one should ever give an opinion. Saying you prefer
spaces because you've had to deal with broken editors that don't handle
tabs well is quite different from saying an editor is wrong/broken if it
isn't using space-tabs. Giving an opinion and presenting an argument are
perfectly fine; I don't agree with calling things inherently wrong if
they aren't what you prefer. I had (and have) no problem with Dave
preferring spaces and giving reasons. I have a problem with him implying
that editors should always use space-tabs and never real tabs,
especially in the context of this thread.

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CPython 3.2.2 | Windows NT 6.1.7601.17640