Since this is a long-standing, real-world problem that linters solved, how could it not be relevant to a discussion about the usefulness of linters?

And the choice of whether to use tabs or spaces does not affect semantics. It is purely a matter of style. Indentation using tabs and indentation using spaces work in exactly the same way.

Because the discussion is about style enforcement and you're talking about semantics enforcement. You may as well be talking about generator comprehensions vs list comprehensions - they're two totally different things semantically.

> It is purely a matter of style. Indentation using tabs and indentation using spaces work in exactly the same way.

This isn't true. It changes how the code can be interpreted by tooling, and it changes how Python interprets the code because it's whitespace sensitive. It's also invisible. It's such an extreme example, I don't think this is reasonable to bring into the conversation for style discussions.