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.