[markbnj]

Interesting! I assume tabs being so common in C projects has to do with their use in makefiles. But what is up with Go? Why are tabs used exclusively there? Not a Go programmer so I assume that must reflect something in the language or typical tool chain.

[nzp]

In case of C it's not just makefiles, in fact I would guess that the reason makefiles use tabs is because there is a historical preference for tabs in C programmers (just a wild guess really). Various C style guides mandate the use of tabs for indentation (and spaces for alignment), for example FreeBSD's Kernel Normal Form Style[0] (which is really an older standard going back to how K&R formatted the code), I think other BSD's use a simmilar style, and Linux kernel coding style[1].

I'm not old enough to know personally, but I have a feeling tabs were preferred in the old days in general at least on Unix platforms. Some of that sentiment might have spilled over into Go.

[0]: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=style&apropos=0&se...

[1]: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/CodingStyle

[fbonetti]

I was curious about that too, so I did a little searching around to find out why. Apparently tabs are the officially recommended format and are emitted by the code formatting tool `go fmt`.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19094704/indentation-in-g...

[cespare]

Yep, gofmt defines and applies a standard formatting that uses tabs for indentation. Using tabs means that everyone can use their own preferred tab stop in their editor while operating on the same code.

[untog]

gofmt enforces tabs.

[benatkin]

Given that, I'm surprised to see that tabs are less prevalent in golang than two spaces are in ruby.

[nkozyra]

That would be disturbing - it would indicate that people are eschewing go fmt.

[Tobani]

It could be more non-go files in the go repos throwing off the numbers?

[iLoch]

Go users aren't satisfied with what's already being used? Big surprise.

[nkozyra]

Not sure I follow. Go fmt is a built-in linter (for lack of a better word) tool. It's not required, it's not unique to Go nor is not using a linter unique to Go users.

In general it tends to have much more religious support among users because of its ease of use and rigid, inarguable formatting.