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Comment by tuetuopay | Hacker News Reader

Yeah but, even ones that don't use literal tab characters use the tab key to write code, right? RIGHT? Like, does he hit space N times?

I somewhat get the argument, but if you're writing code in the HN textarea you're doing something wrong (for code where tab/space matters anyways). Like, any code editor will use the tab key properly.

Though, it sills maddens me there's no somewhat universal tab-entry in OSes like we have with enter (somewhat because there's a mix of shift+enter, alt+enter and cmd+enter). All of shift/alt/ctrl tab are usually also hijacked.

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> Yeah but, even ones that don't use literal tab characters use the tab key to write code, right? RIGHT? Like, does he hit space N times?

Now that I think about it, I think I haven't hit the tab key for indenting code in ages. I use cmd+] and cmd+[ to indent/unindent blocks of code in my default editor and doing so habitual for single lines now as well that I have 'unlearned' the tab key. For the few occasions I'm in a editor that does not have this keybinding I am actually hitting spacebar a few times as it is more predictable than whatever amount of spaces using the tab key would give me (or if it gives me a tab instead of spaces) and me having to dance around with the backspace key as well. Some editors I think use tab/shift-tab to indent/unindent blocks/lines of code, but not insert a tab. But then you are having 2 modes for the same key depending on the context.

Who "he"? I :set et (expand tabs) in vim :-P.

> it sills maddens me there's no somewhat universal tab-entry in OSes like we have with enter

That's a good point!

Were it up to me, I'd probably say something like: Ctrl+`, or maybe ` followed by escape, or something like that. Maybe one of the function keys? Eh...most if not all of those have been hijacked to mean various inane and stupid things too. :/

Hmm...oh! How about: Caps Lock+Shift ? I'm using an ergonomic keyboard, but I think the button press would still work pretty easily. I assume most styles of keyboard would have both, so it wouldn't lock people out if they are writing in a different language, either.

> Like, does he hit space N times?

Like the girl in Silicon Valley! [1]

I thought it was a bit funny that she was just hitting the space key over and over, but around the same time all my hobby programming was in TempleOS and I did the same thing. The indents were only 2 spaces though, and the tabs were eight wide.

Actually TempleOS' creator Terry Davis mixed tabs and spaces for the same argument stated in the Silicon Valley video, to save bytes. They're all rendered as spaces on the website but in the actual TempleOS code it's a mix of both. It means the indentation is really wonky on the Github mirrors (above 8 "spaces" deep), compare [2] and [3].

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRva7UxGQDw

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20180906060812/https://templeos....

3. https://github.com/cia-foundation/TempleOS/blob/archive/Demo...

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