One of the most important things to have for anything that requires some sort of collaboration is to have a standard. Whether or not it’s unifying a country with currency, using the same vernacular for a hobby, or writing academic papers to be peer-reviewed, a standard is important to make sure that everyone is on the same page. In the example of currency, having a standard currency will make it easier for trade and keeps the prices of goods consistent throughout the country. Otherwise, productivity is stifled and a country with goals of trying to unify people under one system, may find itself with a divided state of affairs. As for the case with the hobby, we can take a tactical shooter like Valorant as an example. Call-outs for certain parts of the map need to be standardized to make sure that everyone knows exactly what you are talking about. A team that doesn’t communicate will inevitably just end up collapsing.
Computer science and programming are no exception to this rule. Unless someone can code everything themselves and not need anyone else’s input, some sort of collaboration will be required at some point. Even in the mentioned extreme case, if the person made something like a library or a game engine, other people will want to look at that code to see if they can optimize it even further. People who have looked at other people’s code for the first time trying to debug can relate, it’s overwhelming. The moment they turn their monitor screen at you they just start barraging you with things that they have tried and what they suspect the bug might be coming from. At the same time they’re overloading you with information, you’re also trying to figure out the logic behind their code. If this person’s code isn’t up to standard, it adds an extra layer of confusion and whiplash which just wastes everybody’s time.
One final note I will say about coding standards is that with the current demographics of programmers, I think a coding standard is incredibly important. I would not trust the average programmer, who might have a messy room or not soap their legs in the shower, to be able to write clean and readable code. Establishing a coding standard as something mandatory and extremely important is beneficial in the sense that I would not only NOT want to read a crusty programmer’s code, I also don’t want to be exposed to their body odor for too long.