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Comment by gcp | Hacker News Reader

The canonical indentation for CoffeeScript is 2 spaces. In a language that relies on indentation to define blocks...that's...insane.

I can attest firsthand this causes bugs. 2 spaces just isn't enough to reliably visually identify the horizontal separation.

Python got this right with PEP 8. CoffeeScript did not and is worse for it.

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I've been switching between 2 and 4 spaces through my whole programming career. Even now I'm switching daily between different languages and projects with different amount of indentation. And I for one have noticed no correlation between bugs and amount of indentation. But I might be wrong - I have done no actual measurements.

What I can say though, is that there is a correlation between a lousily indented code and bugs. Consistency is the key in indentation. Reading non-consistently indented code, that's what drives you insane... but two instead of four spaces... hardly.

This isn't about 2 spaces vs 4 spaces. It's about 2 spaces in a language where blocks are defined only by indentation. That's a HUGE difference.

I have no problem with 2 spaces in C/C++. I have no problems with Pythons use of white-space to define blocks. But the combination is deadly.

That is also the convention from Common Lisp, Scheme and (I believe) Ruby.

As for it causing bugs, bugs are like cancer -- they are caused by everything.

Uh, Common Lisp and Scheme use parentheses for block delineation. How does someone on HN not know this? :-)

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