Re: On Tabs and Spaces

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Christer Weinigel wrote:
> 
> But when you start claiming that there are no reasons to use all
> spaces, and that it doesn't solve any problems (it definitely does),
> and that all editors work with hard tabs at 8 (which they don't), at
> least I get a bit frustrated with you.  It's very non-respectful of you
> to claim that everyone is stupid that doesn't agree with you and is
> just asking for silly arguments.  Yes, I know, you're an opinionated
> bastard and proud of it, but maybe you should tone that down a bit.

Hey, fair enough. 

I'm not very tolerant of people who haven't actually done anything, and 
then come in and say things should be done certain ways. The fact is, code 
talks, bullshit walks. 

And bullshit should most definitely not be encouraged. People like that 
should be discouraged *immediately*. I'm not interested in bikeshed 
painters, I think they should be told so forcefully enough that they 
either shut up or go away. 

Maybe it's a character flaw. I'll respect people who do something 
interesting, but re-implementing CVS (and badly, at that) or talking about 
syntactic changes to other peoples projects is not going to fill me with 
respect.

In short, I'll give respect when somebody is shown to be *worth* that 
respect. But respect really has to be earned, not just "assumed", 
otherwise it's pointless.

			Linus