Coding conventions are an important part of software development.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not only the functionality of the code that matters, what the code does, but also the readability, what the code looks like. That is because code is read much more often than it is written. If, within a team or organization, everybody formats his code differently or uses different naming conventions, that is a recipe for disaster.

People have debated for ages about using tabs versus spaces and how many of them, but what is more important is consistency. When existing code uses tabs, keep it this way. When you start from scratch, you have a choice.

Code Conventions for the Java Programming Language can be found at Oracle Technology Network. Python has a Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) for this: PEP 8 — Style Guide for Python Code.

Developers should be familiar with these best practises and try to follow the rules. There are tools to help you with this. For example, Pylint for Python and Checkstyle for Java. However, as PEP 8 points out, it is equally important to know when not to follow the rules. To be consistent with existing code, for example.

A good starting point is the Wikipedia article about coding conventions.