As it happens, I can't count. \t IS 8, though hopefully there's some other reason I got downvoted to -4 than that.
Still though, my question remains. Is there a particular reason you prefer 4? Does it affect your workflow in any way or does it just 'look better' in the abstract? I'm curious.
I use a single tab for indentation, and too much exposure to Java and the Eclipse default indentation size (4 spaces per tab) made me used to it. I also find it easier to look at python code indented by 4 spaces per tab. Since I also tend to limit line length to 80 chars, 8-spaces tabs would quickly use up precious space.
Reading this item :
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1738906 :
in which generators are discussed in comparison with the usual operations from functional programming languages, I was reminded of this article. Hence the submission.
Python's own @contextmanager decorator ( http://docs.python.org/library/contextlib.html#contextlib.co... ) uses generators in quite a clever way. You can grok quite a lot about Python generators by trying to figure out what @contextmanager actually does under the hood.
The article is from 2004, so it doesn't mention modern features like generator expressions, context managers or co-routines (PEP 342). I suspect it was upvoted so much mostly because of the SICP reference.
As a minor sidenote, I personally think 4 spaces for indentation makes the code more readable.