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If you hit Tab in Notepad and hit save you get a file with tabs.

If you hit Tab in IntelliJ or a related IDE you get a file with spaces.

If you hit Tab in an older version of VS (the kind you'd expect in certain types of settings where high pay is not usually expected) you get tabs, but in newer versions you get spaces (with defaults)

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Nah, they all give you tabs once you set them up correctly.

I set tab to call auto-indent or the language formatter on the code. I literally hit tab once to insert whatever is the defined standard for the file. So my single tab key press inserts or removes exactly the right amount of white space.

It's a holdover from my emacs days; the one thing I could not give up from emacs...

Unless the project you're working on has an Editorconfig file and your IDE supports it (VS and IntelliJ do by default).

In this case it is supposed to override your IDE settings.

But that just contributes to the gap, the kind of place that devotes time to things like shared editor configs is the kind of place with enough money (and interest) to contribute to development quality, and places like that probably pay more.

The average "sweatshop/devshop" developer probably doesn't even know/care about tabs vs spaces.

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