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Only thing I can say is that I started my career with tabs as it made more sense on the surface, but then over time migrated to spaces which did not have a lot of issues that I was encountering with tabs, while interoperating with other projects,etc. Spaces are much more frictionless than tabs, so maybe the attitude of trying to reduce friction would be such a variable ?

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> I started my career with tabs as it made more sense on the surface, but then over time migrated to spaces which did not have a lot of issues

I think this is a common phenomenon, not just for individuals but for entire organizations. Over my career I have entered various large existing software projects. I've only seen two classes: (1) "we use spaces only", and (2) "we used to allow tabs but new code must use spaces only". Whatever the perceived theoretical benefits of tabs may be, in practice they seem to cause headaches for teams.

> I started my career with tabs ... but then over time migrated to spaces

Perhaps this anecdote resonates with many developers? If so, then perhaps tabs vs spaces is correlated with years of experience, which is correlated with salary.

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