[Zikes]

We really shouldn't get into this, but I can't help myself.

- Every single text editor that's come after notepad.exe has had automatic tab/space conversion. Pressing tab inserts N spaces, pressing backspace un-indents N spaces, etc.

- In some languages, this is not a feature. 2-character tabs, using two tabs to indent for alignment:

    var myVar = 1,
        otherVar = 2,
        anotherVar = 3;

Opened later in an editor using 4-character tabs:

    var myVar = 1;
            otherVar = 2,
            anotherVar = 3;

- {}[]<> and more aren't used for anything close to their original literary intent.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Tabs should never be used for lining things up, for that very reason. In your example, you've stopped 'indenting' and started 'aligning'. And it's only 'working' because "var " % 2 == 0; other language keywords will screw that up.

[Zikes]

Sounds to me like you're saying there's no objectively correct answer that works for all languages and situations, which I agree with.

[scrollaway]

There... is, actually. If you don't actually attempt to align the variable names, then what you're doing is "indenting items in a list", essentially.

In general, you should avoid aligning unless the readability gains are significant. Aligning things means that you end up re-aligning when you add or remove longer items. This increases maintenance and pollutes diffs (which also means code reviews and git logs).

[jahewson]

My editor aligns things for me - no effort at all.

[scrollaway]

You are creating effort for the people who review your code. On their behalf, please stop, it's tedious.