Programmers who use spaces 'paid more'

Started by dawlane, June 16, 2017, 18:21:32

Previous topic - Next topic

dawlane

So according to this article and blog if you use spaces instead of tabs you get paid more.

Matty

How bizarre.

Formatting counts.....

I wonder if it is related to the system being used. Arcane systems that cant handle tabs might have more highly paid rare specialists.

TomToad

These articles seem to be worded to give you the impression they want you to have.  When I see something which has been "proven" by studies or surveys, I need to look to see just how the surveys are done.  Many times I find that questions have been worded to create the wanted answers, or articles leave out small, but important information that could change your perception.

In this instance, we have 28,657 people surveyed.  Out of that, 40.7% say they use exclusively tabs, 41.8% use exclusively spaces; However, only 12,426 people also provided salary information.  The article does not mention the percentage of space/tab users within that 12,426. This is an important piece of information needed to interpret the results correctly.  In an extreme case, if all space users reported their salary, that would be 11,978 people using spaces and reporting salary vs 447 people using tabs and reporting their salary.  That is way to large of a difference to make any conclusion about who is highest paid.

Now I doubt that the extreme case above is the reality, but what is the actual division?  75%, 50%? 10%?  We don't know and therefore cannot make any valid assumptions as to what is better.
------------------------------------------------
8 rabbits equals 1 rabbyte.

Xaron

Every company I've worked for had coding guidelines which enforce the usage of tabs. There's a good reason for this.

Krischan

I'm a "tabber" and I'll stay with tabs (ok, I dont' get paid for coding but the readability is better with tabs IMHO). And I don't believe surveys in general.
Kind regards
Krischan

Windows 10 Pro | i7 9700K@ 3.6GHz | RTX 2080 8GB]
Metaverse | Blitzbasic Archive | My Github projects

Xaron

Krischan, how can the readability be better? It looks exactly the same. But as soon as you work in teams and you need to use the same. And as some tend to press space sometimes instead of tab there is only one way to ensure that it will always everywhere look the same, no matter which IDE you use... ;)

Krischan

Ok, perhaps the readability is the same. But one tab is four spaces and it's easier to create or delete them than this huge amount of spaces. A disadvantage is posting sourcecode in a forum, my sources were sometimes messed up using tabs in the old bb.com forum but I never switched over to spaces because of that.
Kind regards
Krischan

Windows 10 Pro | i7 9700K@ 3.6GHz | RTX 2080 8GB]
Metaverse | Blitzbasic Archive | My Github projects

Xaron

Look here we go already. So a tab is four spaces on your system, but could be 2 or 8 on another one.

Rooster

I didn't know about using tabs, you lean something new every day.

Brucey

That's that then. Consider me a space convert.

Now to start applying for a new job!

therevills

My works forced coding standards are 2 spaces for indents.

Of course everyone still hits the tab key, but we configure the IDE to convert tabs to 2 spaces :)

Qube

Gee, I can just imagine incorporating this into charging clients...

Me : Here is the quote for the project we discussed
Client : < reads through quote >
Client : Hmm, I see there are two possible charges here?. One says if you use tabs it's X amount but if you use spaces you'll charge us 20% more!
Me : Yes, that's correct
Client : Tabs, spaces? What's the difference?, What are the benefits to us?
Me : No difference and no benefits. It a choice like if I paint your walls using up and down strokes or down and up strokes.
Client : USE FUCKING TABS!!!!

I can't believe for one second that a person who uses spaces rather than tabs generally gets paid more money. I would hazard a guess that in the data there are companies that have enforced a certain style that incidentally pay more money which has skewered the result.
Mac Studio M1 Max ( 10 core CPU - 24 core GPU ), 32GB LPDDR5, 512GB SSD,
Beelink SER7 Mini Gaming PC, Ryzen 7 7840HS 8-Core 16-Thread 5.1GHz Processor, 32G DDR5 RAM 1T PCIe 4.0 SSD
MSI MEG 342C 34" QD-OLED Monitor

Until the next time.

EdzUp

everywhere I've worked uses Tabs and systems that have ranged from IBM XT's using DOS to today's stuff.

Steve Elliott

Quote
My works forced coding standards are 2 spaces for indents.

2?!  You might as well not bother indenting at all!
Win11 64Gb 12th Gen Intel i9 12900K 3.2Ghz Nvidia RTX 3070Ti 8Gb
Win11 16Gb 12th Gen Intel i5 12450H 2Ghz Nvidia RTX 2050 8Gb
Win11  Pro 8Gb Celeron Intel UHD Graphics 600
Win10/Linux Mint 16Gb 4th Gen Intel i5 4570 3.2GHz, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 2Gb
macOS 32Gb Apple M2Max
pi5 8Gb
Spectrum Next 2Mb

Xaron

2 is standard in our company as well.