> On the other hand, joint code ownership leads to endless discussions about proper whitespace formating, variables naming and accessors. That is not my experi

> On the other hand, joint code ownership leads to endless discussions about proper whitespace formating, variables naming and accessors. That is not my experience. Sure, there will be some bikeshedding in the code reviews, but you get rid of most attack surfaces by agreeing on lint/formatting options and just delegating the task to a tool. For me, proper whitespace formatting was whatever gofmt spat out. Later clang-format with the agreed team-wide options and currently pretty-js. The team can instead focus on more important code issues like the overall structure or bugs in the reviews. > It leads to never-enforced style rules that no one likes nor follows. If no one likes, enforces or follows them, you can't really call them rules. If it is the mutual understanding that some style aspects are not relevant, what's the problem keeping it that way? There is no need to let that get in the way of enforcing some aspects of style in order to produce code that anyone in the team can easily work on. > In my case (non critical C# project with easily compartimentalizable functions with diverse team members of different skills, different maturity levels and a propensity to argue over minor formatting details) it meant isolated modules communicating through a well-defined API. IMO one of the best ways to train a new programmer is to have them work closely with more experienced people and with the same level of review scrutiny. I don't know about the project you are working on and its timeline, but in the long term I believe this pays off by turning newbies into good, independent programmers that produce readable and idiomatic code. And no one needs to argue about minor formatting details with the tooling available today. It's a self-imposed waste of time if anything.