Who are the "spacists"?

[Jon Ribbens]

On 2017-03-19, Erik <python at lucidity.plus.com> wrote:
> On 19/03/17 22:29, Jon Ribbens wrote:
>> Not to mention plenty of editors (e.g. vim) will unindent when you
>> press backspace.
>
> I don't think that's strictly true. If you have just indented with a tab 
> character, then backspace will delete that tab character. But, if you 
> indent with either 4 spaces or use the Tab key with "expandtab" enabled, 
> then it will just delete the right-most space character.

The option you want is "smarttab", then it will behave as I describe.
(Or install the "vim-sensible" settings, which I highly recommend.)