"you're advocating for projects that have wildly different coding styles from file to file and function to function?"

I'm advocating for giving up in style as a thing you delude yourself into thinking matters. The opposite of "enforcing consistent style" is not "bedlam and mayhem." I'm saying just let people work on their things and focus on real metrics like testing and algorithmic analysis.

This idea that code should be "consistent" is a gigantic question begging practice. Consistent with what? As according to whom? For what purpose? I will go out on a very short, very thick limb and say that nobody has ever demonstrated a good definition of "consistency," say nothing of the value of adhering to that definition.

It is the way of no way. It does not imply doing things in a stupid way. It implies the narrow minded focus demonstrated by others is an impediment to excellence.

I'm getting rate limited do to an ancient slow-ban I picked up years ago and probably redemonstrate the need for on a regular basis, but I think tacking this text intended as a reply to another person into the end of this comment makes sense.

I suspect if Bruce Lee had ever tried to work as a martial arts instructor in a school as his primary form of living, he'd have found that he couldn't communicate with the other instructors in his school, that they would be insistent that the rigid forms were the only way to achieve true mastery. The value in Bruce Lee being an actor was that he never had to really have that argument with a cadre of fellow instructors. He was able to build his own cult of personality and start his own school. Which, of course now, the art of Jeet Kun Do was ossified into a series of predefined patterns for how to operate, completely missing the point.