Re: Indentation with spaces

[goncholden]

------- Original Message -------
On Thursday, June 9th, 2022 at 9:51 PM, Skip Montanaro 
<skip.montanaro@gmail.com> wrote:


> > > As for TAB not inserting a literal TAB character,
> > > indentation is controlled by the major mode. I believe that
> > > for ELisp, the default indentation is just two spaces.
> > > (Don't quote me on that though.)
> >
> > Why is `indent-tabs-mode' t by default? Tabs should not
> > be used.
>
>
> We say that today. I've been using some version of Emacs since the
> early 1980s. Before the appearance of indentation-sensitive languages
> like Python, inserting a literal TAB when the TAB key was pressed made
> sense.
>
> I suspect it's a case of "old habits die hard."
>
> Skip

Python is garbage as far as I am concerned.  The designers thought it would be 
neat to give semantic meaning to whitespace. Why on earth would they give 
semantic meaning to something that cannot be seen? Who thought that was a good 
idea?