Our first collaborative project dissolved over a heated argument about tabs versus spaces

Establish coding standards early to prevent friendships from crashing harder than your debug attempts.

3 comments

3 Comments

Did you see that old blog post from a Google engineer about how spaces lead to more consistent rendering across editors? I remember reading that and it stuck with me because it made so much sense. It's insane how such a small detail can cause big fights, but when you're collaborating, consistency is key. Your point about establishing standards early is spot on. Without them, you're just asking for merge conflicts and hurt feelings. I've been on teams where this wasn't decided, and we wasted hours debating instead of coding. Now I always push for spaces in my projects, but I make sure it's agreed upon from day one.

eric_kim7h ago

Exactly, and that flexibility with tabs removes so much pointless friction. I've seen spaces-only projects where someone's editor converts tabs to spaces automatically, then the next person has a different tab width setting, and suddenly the whole file looks mangled in code reviews. With tabs for indentation, the worst that happens is someone prefers 2-space widths while another likes 4, but the structure remains intact and everyone reads it their own way.

the_grant20h ago

That Google engineer blog post always seemed like overthinking it to me lol. Tabs actually solve the consistency problem better because they let each dev set their preferred indent width in their editor, while the file stays aligned. Spaces just force your personal preference on everyone else. The real standard should be "use tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment," which handles both readability and personal choice.