Nowadays with prettier, gofmt and similar, there's almost no languages remaining without high quality, fast formatters which can run on save. So changing from spaces to tabs should be as simple as updating to tabs:true in prettier config.
Which is half of why this is an insoluble problem. There's no solution that doesn't impose some workflow or wetware overhead on introduction.
Installing "Tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment" on wetware is probably the best solution in terms of maximizing utility for minimized development/workflow costs. But even that is going present a wetware tax for some developers, and it's not superior in terms of utility to the article's proposal.
We don't know that there's no solution. One of your siblings suggested having the editor just use space alignment. I can't see any reason why that wouldn't work either and was the idea I had in mind.
But installing ideas onto wetware is perhaps the most expensive thing that can ever be considered. Because it often involves fighting a war.
We've got a git hook that prettifies and runs unit tests on commit. Works very nicely. Formatting is one flame war, another is code style. We've automated that too with sticking to airbnb. If there are any warning a commit does not pass.
