Go into your home directory and create the file .vimrc; if the file is already there, add these lines. Make sure you do not put spaces around the = sign you see in the lines below.

set et
set tabstop=4
syntax on

What are the benefits? Your tab will translate uniformly into four spaces. No more maddening Python indent errors will plague you. You will also have syntax coloring.

In the .vimrc file, the double-quote mark, ", is a one-line comment.