Two completely different rebuttal options to the “IDE can display them with any width” argument: 1) Your IDE can parse code and reformat it in literally any wa

Two completely different rebuttal options to the “IDE can display them with any width” argument: 1) Your IDE can parse code and reformat it in literally any way you want. This includes indentation width (regardless of whether the code is actually stored using tabs or spaces), but also things like line width, semicolons, string quoting style, etc. (e.g. Prettier for JavaScript), or even using completely different language syntaxes that have the same semantics (e.g. Ocaml and ReasonML). 2) Stylistic code formatting choices, while completely ignored by the computer, are important for humans. Some style choices can have significant effects on engineering quality. The obvious example is variable names, but perhaps a subtler example is that a wide indentation width can discourage deep nesting.