Simply using the term "fluff" to describe the form of code shows a lack of respect that I find deeply troubling. Those that pay little attention to code style, form, names of things, etc. (including those who rely on the tooling to fix it for them) tend to miss other, arguably more critical, things. Sometimes, but not always, this happens because those errors are lost in a soup of poor formatting and copy-paste repetition.
I had a coworker come to my desk one day, years ago. "Why did you add all that duplicated code to that file??" Huh? Oh, I didn't 'add' that duplication. I took two long files by two different authors, changed them to use the same white space, variable names, comment style and organization strategy. That's all I did. I didn't have the time at that moment to take the next step.
He came back four hours later and said that he couldn't stand it and he had refactored the code and fixed/written some tests.
Perfect. I learned long ago that there are ways you can start cleaning that will induce (some) others to participate.
He spent hours writing tests while I was working on an adjacent part of the code that had worse bugs in it. The work got done and a big piece of the code (this was a project I supported but didn't maintain) didn't, in the end, have my edit history all over it.
I see a lot of article that tell you how to improve code, and they often seem focused in the wrong area. Python's PEP for example, I see the value in it, but you can follow that to the letter and still have a badly designed application and confusing code.
Aren't style guides supposed to help write code that is more standard in style, and hence easier to read - because your brain will become accustomed to that style.
