> it signifies that you have spent enough time programming in a wide variety of platforms and with enough other peers to run in to the issue and understand that it exists

Or maybe it signifies youthful inexperience?

Of the programmers that I know, the longer they have been programming, and the more varied projects they have worked on, the less they care about tabs v. spaces. Whatever standard the project they're working on uses, that's how they set up their editor for that project, because it's one less thing to have to worry about.