For better formatting tabs are discouraged in questions and answers. See, for example, the How to create a Minimal, Reproducible Example section of the help:
Also, use spaces instead of tabs – tabs might not get correctly formatted on Stack Overflow.
However tabs are meaningful in Makefiles where they cannot be replaced by spaces. When answering a make question and suggesting some make code, I always comply with the no-tabs recommendation and replace them by 4 spaces. It frequently happens that the OP copy-paste the suggested code and post a comment indicating that it doesn't work:
Makefile:NN: *** missing separator. Stop.What shall I do? Ignore the no-tabs recommendation in make code snippets or always explain that, after copy-pasting, the leading spaces in recipes shall be replaced by tabs?