phrase-meaning
Wally: I worked every night for a month to come up with a detailed quote for one of our potential customers.
Dilbert: Then those weasels used our quote to get a better price from their regular vendor!
Dilbert: Did you really do all of that work?
Wally: No, but it nets out the same.
What does the phrase nets out mean in this context?
The construction
(verb) + it out
can be used to emphasize a verb in the sense to do that verb more, to do it until its maximum capacity, or to do it completely. So your example means
use more spaces
In other words, it means exactly what the first part says
Use spaces liberally throughout your code
There are other examples:
Talk it out
To talk until you are satisfied, or until you express all your burdensome emotions
Work it out
To work on a problem until it is finished or fixed
Stretch it out
To stretch something, like a muscle until it is warmed up, or a rubberband until it is about to break
Stick it out
To continue to do something to its end
There are other examples.
Further, the meaning I gave is not strict. Here is a special case.
It means to stop something completely. For example, if you are trying to study, but your little brother or sister keeps asking you to play, you might tell him or her "Cut it out!"
a snaking line
looks and moves like a snake
Best Answer
Something nets out - meaning has/results in a summary value, including various side-effects - for whatever form of value you're assigning.
Something nets out the same if the outcome is of the same value. It can also net out better or worse.
Your example is from a humorous source, so it's used tongue-in-cheek: "I worked every night for a month" yielding the same result as just coming up with the figure with minimum effort.
Let's take some more standard examples:
or
And something counter-intuitive:
The expression to net out comes directly from net weight:
...which in this case means something exactly opposite!