Coding standards are common in any software development organization, but how important are they to follow?  I can understand the need for some consistency, but when dealing with simple things like the position of braces, line length, etc., I'm not sure excessively strict standards contribute much to software development.Isn't it more important that your code is readable, not that it conforms to a predefined standard?  It seems they're more like... guidelines anyway.
How important are code formatting guidelines?
coding style;team;coding standards
Asking everyone to 100% adhere to the same standard code formatting guideline is like asking everyone to collaborate separately on writing a 100 page paper with the same writing style.  Hopefully everyone will write the paper in English (or same language), but different styles will be apparent.  Some will write it well, others not.  Some will use contractions, some will spell the words out fully (example: it's verus it is).  Etc.I think you touched on the most important points: It's a guidelineReadabilityIf you want the code to adhere to the same formatting, like a paper to be in the same writing style, it'll need editing and revising.  The code will need to be cleaned up, reviewed, re-factored, etc.I've never been in a shop where I was completely happy with another developer's coding style or formatting (at minimal because it's not exactly like mine).  But I'll be content if I can read/understand it and if it's consistent.  Everything else is the sugar on the syntactic sugar.So to answer your question: somewhat important, but it's certainly not the end of the world if they don't.