Why Tabs vs Spaces Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Well… the title says it all. Guess I’m not so good at this blogging thing… 😅

Okay, well if you’re still here, I suppose we should discuss the elephant in the room: tabs vs spaces. A debate so old it predates your favorite programming language, and one that has somehow lingered on like a zombie from the early internet. But why do we even have this conversation at all?

The Great Split

Let’s rewind to the early days of programming, back when teams shared code through patch files, diffs, and printouts. The way your code looked wasn’t just a matter of preference—it was about consistency, portability, and often about how your terminal or editor would render it. In that context, tabs and spaces were not interchangeable.

• Tabs saved file size and let users choose how wide indentation should appear.
• Spaces ensured precise control over alignment, regardless of editor or terminal settings.

Teams argued passionately, editors behaved inconsistently, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a project’s entire codebase rewritten just to normalize indentation.

At some point, this simple formatting choice became a stand-in for bigger philosophical arguments: flexibility vs control, accessibility vs uniformity, performance vs aesthetics. You weren’t just choosing a character—you were picking a side in a war for the ages.

So, where did you fall? Were you a principled space purist, or a tab-for-efficiency evangelist? Or did you just copy whatever the team did and hope no one noticed?

I personally had my own opinions of what was best. Reflecting back, I question, does it really matter?

The Modern Landscape

Fast-forward to today. You’re probably using an IDE or editor that auto-formats your code on save. You have .editorconfig, or Prettier, or ESLint, or some combination of tools that makes the decision for you. You write the code; your editor handles the rest. If you aren't, maybe we should discuss what's keeping you up at night. It's really ok, the monsters aren't in the tools.

In other words: it doesn’t matter anymore.

Modern engineering teams align on a formatter and move on. The days of nitpicking whitespace in PRs are over (or at least, they should be). The battle was won—not by tabs or spaces—but by automation. Automation that helps us bootstrap quicker, deliver higher quality code with a higher confidence and actually enjoy our day to day work. If you are miserable with your tools, why are you still using them?

So Why Does It Still Come Up?

Because it’s funny. It’s a meme. It’s a shibboleth. Saying “I use tabs” is like saying “vim is better than emacs”—it signals tribe, not tooling. And that’s okay. Joking about tabs vs spaces is a rite of passage. Arguing about it seriously in 2025, though? That might just be a red flag.

The Bottom Line

Use tabs. Use spaces. Use Morse code if you want. But let your editor handle it. Configure your formatter, commit the settings, and never think about it again.

And if you do catch yourself in a heated tabs-vs-spaces debate, just remember:

"editor.formatOnSave": true