Who are the "spacists"?

[Mikhail V]

> On 19 March 2017 at 01:39, Steve D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> On Sun, 19 Mar 2017 08:24 am, Mikhail V wrote:
>>
>> I've noticed a tendency that more and more users
>> choose tabs.

>Have you really? I've noticed the opposite.

Not *really*, but on stackoverflow more and more
answers recommending tabs are upvoted. Few years ago
IIRC I noticed merely upvoted PEP citations.
Of my friends, I know those who use Sublime editor
on Macs, use tabs, probably spaces cause issues there, IDK.
Younger people today have more
and more previous experience with digital documents
and already familiar with the concept of tabulation.
Also after one tries to move the cursor around line
beginnings and try to delete or add indentation,
with spaces it is not so easy.
On the other hand I've noticed that spacists are
for some reason quite active in the web and at times even
agressive, writing that tabs are 'cancer' and so on.

>> Indeed if you think about it, using several spaces for
>> one level of indentation is ridiculous

>Is it?

Yes it is. In the times of DOS it felt totally ok
to indent e.g. 2 spaces, but those were text mode apps
on small resolution screens. Now one wants more than 2
spaces for sure, and for Python specifically, the intuitive
wish is to use one tab for one indentation level, since
one already knows that indentation is important and
despite spaces work, those are not control characters.
The point is that spaces are not supposed for indentation
regardless if it is code or MS Word document, at least
in the modern world.

This reminds me of Lexicon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicon_(program)
It is a DOS text-mode word processor, to make full line justify
it inserts additional spaces between words.
All those space alignments is more about ASCII art.