[zozbot234]

> It takes even longer to get people used to maintaining coding standards so that what they write is easy to understand.

Formatting tools with a standard default syntax solve that problem quite nicely, and they do it more effectively than something as error-prone as significant whitespace.

[ufmace]

I disagree that it solves the problem I described. For beginner users, every extra tool you set up exponentially increases their setup efforts. They are highly likely to be skipped or bypassed, and it's not like they're contributing to large group projects yet. It's more beneficial for at least a few core standards to be enforced at the language level.