I can see his point. I'm also perfectly fine with programming without a linter/formatter for personal projects or bigger projects where quality is more importan

I can see his point. I'm also perfectly fine with programming without a linter/formatter for personal projects or bigger projects where quality is more important than speed. The code doesn't look worse. In fact it might end up better. But for corporate teams, doing web dev? It is definitely necessary, unless you want to spend days reviewing trivialities, or you're ok with the code looking like a patchwork quilt of styles.