[wrs]

Enforcing consistent choices for things that don’t matter is most of the value of a code style linter. In fact “things that don’t matter” is not a bad definition of “code style”.

(BTW, “then” on a multiline “if” is definitely outside mainstream Ruby style, based on my decade of experience...this is not one of Rubocop’s controversial defaults.)

[jjgreen]

I'm not sure I agree, code style is (or should) be about things like method length, naming conventions, iteration styles ... those do matter and should be in the scope of a linter. The presence of the word "then" which makes no difference to the resulting bytecode but does make the code more readable (IMHO) is not.

(BTW, I've seen "then"s aplenty in my decade-and-a-bit of Ruby experience, possibly this is a geographical thing, like the SF no-parentheses-in-methods thing)

[wrs]

I guess one could distinguish between “code formatter” and “code style linter” and declare that anything that doesn’t affect the resulting binary (“doesn’t matter” in your definition) has to be in the former. But I don’t think I’d want such a strict division of tools. I think formatting does matter.

Sounds like maybe rubocop needs “-east-coast” and “-west-coast” presets. :)