[ajross]

> While there is room for op-eds in the paper,

My experience is that projects which value code formatters (and similar rulemaking) tend strongly not to have room for "op-eds", FWIW. And conversely the code bases I've seen with the best/cleanest/most-clearly-expressive code tend strongly to be the ones with fewer rules.

I think the one exception there is in some open source contexts (Linux is the archetype) which receive a fire hose of submissions of questionable quality and maintainership. There, you can use adherence to arbitrary rules as a proxy measurement[1] for attention and effort on the part of the submitter. And that I have no problem with.

But the actual value of code formatters is IMHO extremely low in practice, and the cost isn't "high", but is non-trivial.

[1] The "No Brown M&M's" trick.