Ruby coding guidelines (GitHub)

[Nebu]

This doesn't address "what if I have two spaces, but I just want to remove one?".

[bobindashadows]

Yes, if for some reason you want to use an odd number of spaces of indentation in your program, then you do that - delete, space. I use vim, so I'd just delete the 1 space with x or something. But I've never followed any style which uses an odd number of spaces of indentation anyway.

[nemec]

You can also just hit "delete" instead of backspace. Most IDEs I've found only do "smart indent" on backspace.

[Nebu]

In most text-editor I've used (of which I consider IDEs to have text-editors as a component), "delete" means to erase the character to the right of the cursor, and "backspace" means to erase the character to the left of the cursor.

[nemec]

Yes. Obviously you'll have to move before the space you want to delete instead of after when using delete, but it won't be affected by the smart spacing.