2 vs 4 spaces indentation for coding

Ever found yourself trying to decide if 2 or 4 spaces is best for your new code project? Great! Keep reading.

I could save you the hassle of reading the entire post and tell you which of the two is better. As you probably know, it’s based on individual preference for personal/solo projects and coding guidelines if you are coding for an organization (assuming the organization has coding guidelines).

My preference as a software developer is to use 2-space indentation in front-end projects and 4-space indentation in backend projects. However, using 4-space indentation gives more margin than required. On the flip side, 2-space indentation makes for inadequate spacing and may reduce code readability in some cases.

Why not have the best of both worlds? Use 3 spaces/tab . It’s a no brainer right? The 2 and 4 space indentation as we know is a convention that has been widely adopted. Don’t bother trying to debate if 3 space indentation is valid for coding. I use 3 spaces indentation in my new projects. This is clearly communicated to the other team members at the start of the project.

That said, I’ll leave the space vs tab indentation comparison for another post.

I’ll be glad to get your views on 3 space/tab indentation in the comment section. Thanks for reading.

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