I personally switch between at least 3 different editors, and wind up reading code semi-regularly on at least 5 different machines under a number of accounts, some of them shared. Every one of those editors and machines has a default tab stop of 8, and my life is too short to worry about changing them all.

With space based indentation, I don't have to care. I also don't have to try to convert everyone around me who uses space based indentation (and some of whose editors are stupidly set to compress code by turning 8 spaces into tabs). All in all it makes life far nicer for me that the codebase I am working on is space indented. (With some tabs whose presence is invisible to me, because I leave the tab width alone.)

Therefore to me there is a slight advantage to space basd indentation. And there is a huge advantage when it comes to not having to fight the whole world.

Actually punched cards never used tab characters, they were always space indented, so in that sense I am harking back to tradition - the old ways are the good ways having survived the test of time.

Actually what I was advocating was not a traditional technology when editors were not smart enough to manage spaces to provide the programmers desired indentation, but the use of modern editors that can manage space based indentation and a whole lot more besides.

In very large part this whole debate is a storm in a tea cup because editors just don't care whether you use space or tab based indentation. Indeed Komodo takes a look at the document you load and makes a pretty damn good guess at what tab width is most likely to be correct for the document.

Go ahead, use your anachaic and archaic tabs - my editor can eat them for breakfast and spit out spaces.