Spaces work better than tabs because the code is always formatted properly. Code that is formatted improperly does not do what you think it does. This matters a lot when you have projects developed by 200+ developers with multiple millions of LOC. It matters even more when you have 3000+ developers working on many such code bases and they move between said projects with high frequency.

You cannot have your indent be two and me with 8 and have the code line up properly, especially when lining up complex if or math statements (where you may be using the level of indent to help with showing how the parens or operators nest). While you could argue "then split into multiple statements", I could argue "it's actually more readable as is". Subjective is neat that way.

Files that are being constantly updated because someone doesn't like someone elses formatting is dumb. Have a standard, stick to it. Fire the offender who refuses to play ball, problem solved.

Who prints code? Fine, let's say you do. Modifying the number of spaces per tab causes the issue I pointed out at phase 1.

Relationship argument makes no sense to me, sorry. Where the code lines up is what matters to me, not how many invisible characters appear between the beginning of the line and the first character.

Read his post again, it was clearly written sarcastically.

Citation needed.

The reason it's the number 80 was rather arbitrary, but a throwback to old punch-card systems.

I say this in a slightly different, but more concise way:

Comments (and self-documenting code) should tell you "what" and "why", because the code is telling you "how".

It's a little shortsighted to use "always" to describe the web's winning streak for two reasons:

1) The web has not always won. Despite Google's Office suite, Microsoft continues to dominate the office space and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. So at least in one market, thick clients have continued to win out over thin clients.

2) The web is just not that old. Claiming that the web will win because it has always won is a weak appeal to tradition made especially weak by the fact that the web is realistically 13-15 years old.

You must be new here... ;)

Here's my slightly offtopic rant for you slashdotters that think it's funny or clever to replace an 's' with a dollar sign.

I get it. You think that the entity being referred to is greedy. Here's what you don't seem to get. It's childish, and it does one of three things:

1) It gives the impression that your rhetoric wouldn't be strong enough to stand on its own--therefore you need a gimmick to ensure that people really get your message.
2) It's unrelated to your rhetoric, and therefore distracting from your overall message.
3) It makes you seem to be an uninformed, out of touch individual who has no concept of how things work in the real world.

I'm going to offer a bit of free advice, whether you want it or not. Spelling and presentation matter. And do you know why they matter? They matter because you're trying to convey a message. Your readers and listeners only have so much concentration they can or will devote to understanding your message. If we have to spend effort translating your spelling or grammatical errors, or we have to perform in-place symbol substitution, that is distracting us from the point you are trying to make. Do yourself a favor, and give up on these childish devices.

Here's a short list of the slashdotisms that need to die:

- Substituting '$' for 's'
- ^H (acceptable for Funny posts only)
- Calling Microsoft employees or users Microserfs

How many single workloads do you think were already pushing the 2G or 4G in the numbers that Intel was trying to sell into? And how many of those workloads do you think would've benefited from less than 50% more memory?

I can express this easily in python as well, and honestly given reasonable functions in C/C++, I could do so there. A lot of complexity in code is entirely dependent on how clearly you decide to make your code, and where you decide to provide helper functions.

For example, I'd probably do something like this in python:

for item in filter(lambda x: x.Checked, styleMenu):
    if item.Style not in currentFont.ProvidedStyles:
        item.Checked = false

Contrary to what a lot of purists say, I disagree that syntax is unimportant. I think it's very important. But I also think that where the syntax of a language fails you, you can (typically) make up a lot by writing helpful functions. For example, here's a stab at this in C++. Please forgive my early adoption of the auto keyword, I agree that the syntax of iterating over containers in stl is pretty verbose.

if (currentFont) {
    auto items = styleMenu.items();
    for (auto it = items.begin(); it != items.end(); ++it) {
        if (!it->IsChecked()) continue;
        if (!currentFont->ProvidesStyle(it->Style)) {
            it->SetChecked(false);
        }
    }
}

Language choice definitely matters, and many new languages offer high level abstractions that just make coding easier and more productive. But old languages can, for some cost, be made more easily readable, too.

As a bit of a sidebar, you pay more than a "mild penalty" for using Ruby as opposed to C/C++

Comparison

You know, Palin is very familiar with Russian Roulette, primarily because Russia is her neighbor.

That's just false. All non-Live games work in offline mode in some capacity. It's part of logo testing.

According to this article, ~40% of class action lawsuits are dismissed, and virtually all others are settled. It's so rare, this article is ABOUT the novelty of a class action lawsuit going to trial.

That whooshing sound you hear all the time? That's every joke ever told rushing past you without any sort of comprehension on your part.

Brainfuck, whitespace, etc? These are all jokes. You're never intended to use them at all.