Python’s syntax relies on indentation for statement grouping. The convention is to use spaces, but I’ve always found tabs to be easier to work with in vim. My largest gripe: if I mis-tabbed, I had to press “delete” four times to erase all the spaces I created. Turns out, that needn’t be the case: vim can detect multi-space indentation and delete one “tab” at a time.

Here are some good resources I found while digging into this:

1. Secrets of tabs in vim
2. Notes on using Vim and Python — check out the autoindentation based on file name, just below the main table
3. Converting tabs to spaces

Bonus: check out vimrc in the python “Vim” folder for other helpful files.