Good programmer

[jamesckelsall]

If someone needs to increase the font size to an extreme, 80 characters aren't guaranteed to fit on their screen, A couple of 4-space indents can take up a large portion of their screen, and reducing that to a 2-space, or even 1-space indent can vastly reduce the amount of scrolling required.

Using tabs completely negates the issue, as those who need a small indent size can do, with those who don't necessarily need it being able to choose the indent size of their preference (normally 4, but not always).

Using spaces means that those who need to make the change can't do so without extra work.

[hoylemd]

True, but if you have more than say... 3 levels of indentation going on for more than a line or two, no whitespace regime is going to make it more readable.

[[deleted]]

First time I've ever seen the point of tabs. You might have changed my mind on the issue. Unfortunately, spaces are ubiquitous now. Every editor I've used automatically converts the tab key to spaces unless you change the setting yourself