The reality is that the way humans write code is complex and if you try to use simple rules it's going to look bad in many cases. What linters have been doing

The reality is that the way humans write code is complex and if you try to use simple rules it's going to look bad in many cases. What linters have been doing is to figure out --some-- rules that are general enough that can be enforced. Complete formatters like black are making decisions for --every single formatting choices--. In practice, they need to be complex if they want to have people using them.