[varrock]

Specifically for reviewing a pull request in GitHub, wouldn't the "Hide whitespace" setting reduce some of this noise? I could be mistaken, though, but that's how I interpreted that setting.

0: https://github.blog/2011-10-21-github-secrets/

[sltkr]

This is often useful, but JavaScript specifically has the annoying property that newlines can be semantically meaningful.

For example, if someone changes:

    function isUserBanned(username) {
      return db.findUserByName(username)?.banned;
    }

To:

    function isUserBanned(username) {
      return
          db.findUserByName(username)?.banned;
    }

you want to see that diff because the second version always returns undefined. If you ignore whitespace changes entirely, it becomes possible for people to sneak in bugs intentionally or unintentionally.

[HALtheWise]

How much does prettier formatting help here for practical cases? In particular, if the autoformatter allowed that second example with the indentation on the last line, I'd treat that as an autoformatter bug.

[blauditore]

That's technically true, but extrememly rare to cause real problems (short of bad intent). It reminds me of people/teams enforcing braces on single-line ifs, because one might add another line someday, forget to add braces, and break the logic. Even when it happens, there should still be tests that catch this.

[tharkun__]

Enforce semicolons.

[chris_wot]

gawd and this is why the semicolon debate wasn't just bike shedding.