Think about visiting a restaurant where the food is excellent, but the kitchen is a mess. Even if you loved the meal, seeing the kitchen will make you think twice about eating there again. Another example that is closer to the computer world is data centers.

Look at the following picture. Which network installation do you think is easier to manage, modify and troubleshoot?

Properly formatted code looks more professional, and that is never a bad thing.

The way you format your code is important. It’s important because code that is well formatted is easier to read. When all source files follow the same format you know where to look for things like fields, public methods, constructors, etc.

In the next post we’ll discuss some guidelines for how to format the code you write.