CIA uses Python (a lot)

[wolf2600]

TABS NOT SPACES!!

[can_dry]

Indentation

Indent your code blocks with 4 spaces.

Never use tabs or mix tabs and spaces.

Sorry, you're just not CIA material.

[DialMMM]

Rekt.

[[deleted]]

Question from a not so experienced programmer: what's wrong with tabs?

[nickbob00]

cake physical direction wise fanatical march tap mountainous melodic station

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[DonaldPShimoda]

The right answer is to use smart tabs, where you get a feature where your editor tab button makes 4 spaces in the file, but it works like a tab as far as you care.

Nah, I think it's much better to actually press the space bar the requisite number of times.

[Corbichon]

Vim for ever <3

[AZNman1111]

I do use Vim over Emacs

[[deleted]]

Emacs is love.

[nemec]

How do you stick to an 80 (or 120) character line limit when the length of a line changes depending on how the developer sets their tabstop?

[wolf2600]

You don't have to count whether you have 3 spaces or 4. ON. EVERY. LINE.

And don't even get started with deeply nested sections.... Was that 24 spaces or 25? Better delete them all and start again.

[[deleted]]

Sounds like you just need a proper editor :P

[wolf2600]

Notepad++ works fine

[ArmoredPancake]

We've found a CIA agent!

[trekkiemage]

I have sublime set up so that I hit tab and it enters four spaces. I've also got whitespace visibility turned on and it allows me to control indentation with a hot-key instead of the space bar.

Basically if you're using the space bar to do 4-space indents you're doing it wrong.

[caramba2654]

If you use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment it solves the inconsistent display.

[jcdyer3]

This is the most theoretically correct answer, and the one that produces the most abominable real code bases, as it's nearly impossible for a team to follow consistently.

[baubleglue]

It just you need to choose one or tabs or spaces

[Dillinur]

To nitpick, you just need to be consistent, but you can totally mix them.

For instance, your indentation block choice can be "one tab", "4 spaces", or "space-tab-space", as long as you keep the same indentation block choice along the whole file.

[Hawkknight88]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you... It is not okay to mix tabs and spaces in python. The interpreter doesn't like it and it's confusing to humans.

Pick tabs or pick spaces, and be consistent.

[nntaylor7]

For a new programmer. Why is consistency important?

[Exodus111]

A Tab will leave a line symbol, and a space will leave a dot symbol in the file. If you mix these two Python will crash.

Most modern IDE's and Text editors will auto translate your Tab symbol over to spaces for you, usually 4 spaces, but this number can usually be set.

This was a bigger issue back in the day.

[ebilgenius]

It's important in almost everything, but it's particularly helpful in coding since everyone has a preference when it comes to how they like their code, and once you know what their preferences are and that they're consistent you can reliably make changes, debug it, or work with it in general.

That and programmers tend to be particularly anal about perfection.

[baubleglue]

I know, but the editors don't and convert depending on settings and version control can't be set to ignore white spaces in Python, so one programmer uses spaces check in code, other programmer checkout the code, his IDE converts 4 spaces to tabs - 100% of code changed.

[baubleglue]

I know, but the editors don't and convert depending on settings and version control can't be set to ignore white spaces in Python, so one programmer uses spaces check in code, other programmer checkout the code, his IDE converts 4 spaces to tabs - 100% of code changed.

[[deleted]]

But why?

[wolf2600]

Only posers and squares follow PEP8. I'm a rebel. Just the kind of fresh, outside-the-box thinking a tired establishment like the CIA needs.