The tradeoff here is not being able to use a universal set of tooling to interact with source files. Anything but text makes grep, diff, sed, and version control less effective. You end up locked into specialized tools, formats, or IDE extensions, while the Unix philosophy thrives on composability with plain text.
There's a scissor that cuts through the formatting debate: If initial space width was configurable in their editor of choice, would those who prefer tabs have any other arguments?
There's a scissor that cuts through the formatting debate: If initial space width was configurable in their editor of choice, would those who prefer tabs have any other arguments?