Code aesthetics

Im an expert in code aesthetics. Ask me anything about GNU vs K&R brace placement, tabs vs spaces, the best comment syntax, huffman encoded syntactic tokens etc. I can also reformat code into a beautiful styel for BTC

>>3
They're for tabulating figures into tables on typewriters.
That's why they're supposed to be up to 8 characters wide. 4 characters isn't enough room to fit any useful figure.
Their continued use in programming languages is an accident of history, though a useful one, as it allows people to view code at whatever indentation width they desire.