Embracing Simplicity in Code Formatting and Linting
I used to spend too much time configuring formatters and linters. I would pick rules from Airbnb or Google's style guides and tweak Prettier, ESLint, Black, and whatever else the project used until everything matched my taste. Then I'd join a new team, find out they preferred something else, and we'd argue about tabs, trailing commas, single quotes, or semicolons. Even after settling on a config, someone always wanted one more adjustment. It was exhausting, and most of it came down to taste.
Now I use the defaults. My prettierrc.json is just {}, and my ESLint config only extends eslint:recommended. I don't care about tabs versus spaces anymore. The tools decide, the code stays consistent, and I stop thinking about it.
That mental energy used to go into formatting debates. Now it goes into writing code that actually matters.
This same idea works beyond code. When I stop obsessing over the perfect design system, the perfect process, or the perfect meeting format, I have more room to think about the real problem we're solving.