I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. I would want this useless-to-compiler information not to be encoded in the model we are using to store code and let each and every user define their own view with their own preference. So Marketa could use tabs, 2 spaces width and you could use 4 spaces.

I’m actually trying to build a VCS that would store the AST and not the source text, so there would be an element "indent" and not 1 tab or n spaces… wish I had more time though.

Nice! I'm actually trying to write a non-textual programming language with built-in VCS that stores the AST in DB and allows direct manipulation of AST via voice commands. The indentation (if it even exists) would be only in the view as defined in IDE.

That sounds even more cool!

Honestly at this point,

.editorconfig

handles the actual encoding of whitespace and makes it easy to type and edit in whichever makes you most comfortable. IntelliJ is usually pretty good about handling multiple spaces as tabstops.

tabs, and spaces are such a big deal that you guys are writing VCSes for that? 😮

Not only tabs and spaces.