

Ask HN: I can't read code indented with 2 spaces: do I need glasses? - danielstudds

I'm doing a lot of work in Javascript at the moment, and it seems like most of the world indents using only 2 spaces - which I find really hard to read, particularly (say) long grunt config files, where indentation makes a big difference to meaning. Do I just have much worse eyesight than your average coder, am I using the wrong toolset, or do other people have this problem?
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ElongatedTowel
Just an idea I haven't seen implemented yet:

Tabs have the advantage of beeing of variable width while spaces don't. But
two or more consecutive spaces are rarely used for more than just aligning
code. In theory the editor could render double the spaces (or rather a space
with twice the width) for every amount of spaces higher than one, effectively
doubling the indent.

No conversion (retabbing) would have to take place and therefore no hardcoding
the value, which often breaks languages which don't like mixed tabs and spaces
as the retabber might encounter three consecutive spaces and only convert two
of them to a tab if told to do so.

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jyu
Can't you adjust your given IDE / text editor to accomodate? Look for hints in
whitespace sensitive languages like python or coffeescript. For instance, you
could use retab in vim.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9104706/how-can-i-
convert...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9104706/how-can-i-convert-
spaces-to-tabs-in-vim-or-linux)

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ratboy666
True geeks should use their own editor. When I ran across 2 space indentation,
I also couldn't keep track. So, I implemented a vertical marking bar in the
editor, that I could use to "comb" the code. Works beauty, I suspect that
implementations of this idea are available for editors like vim as well.

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a3n
Ask your $PROFESSIONAL.

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devonbarrett
Try another color scheme?

But see an optician.

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stephenr
Further proof tabs make more sense.

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johnbm
Try changing your font, line/letter spacing, or turning on indentation
guidelines. This is mine: <http://imgur.com/0BSq6lE>

