[Tabs vs Spaces] What is the proper and popular indentation character for programming?
Coding standard or coding convention is very important for programmers and QAs to understand logic easily and source code should be easy to read. Most people asks which is the proper or popular indentation character Tabs or Spaces. Since Stack Overflow and GitHub analyzed which is the proper or popular, let's look into the results.Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2017
Stack Overflow asked developers which indentation character they use.42.9% of approximately 39,000 developers use Tabs and approximately 37.8% use Spaces. 19.3% use both as follows.
GitHub analyzed source code commits
GitHub analyzed commits per programming languages, so let's look at each. We will see difference results from the Stack Overflow's.JavaScript developers use Tabs or Spaces? 80.64% of JavaScript developers use space character.
Java developers use Tabs or Spaces?
66.466% of Java developers use space character.
Python developers use Tabs or Spaces?
94.866% of Python developers use space character.
Scala developers use Tabs or Spaces?
96.835% of Scala developers use space character.
Ruby developers use Tabs or Spaces?
95.563% of Ruby developers use space character.
C# developers use Tabs or Spaces?
82.172% of C# developers use space character.
PHP developers use Tabs or Spaces?
70.729% of PHP developers use space character.
As a result of that, Stack Overflow (Engineer QA site) says most people use Tabs, but people in GutHub who develop open source software use Spaces.
There are so many conversation about which indentation character is popular or better, but Spaces might be better since big companies such as Google and Microsoft use GitHub and use Spaces.
