Wait, you're saying you're using tabs mid line? ow! Your code will look like garbage if the viewer uses different tab stops. I don't mind doing some extra work to avoid that.

It's also a big time waster and distraction to have to pause after each press of Del or cursor to see how far the cursor has moved. I can delete 10 spaces faster than I can delete 10 columns that may contain tabs.

Personally, I often come from the left and use Ctrl-Del (delete to character or EOL) since it's usually more natural to come from the left in the situations in which such an operation is done.