Is there any benefit to obsession with making code "look pretty"?

Posted by TaylorOtwell on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by TaylorOtwell
Published on 2011-07-08T15:07:52Z Indexed on 2012/09/01 15:48 UTC
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clean-code

Sometimes I spend ridiculous amounts of time (hours) agonizing over making code "look pretty". I mean making things look symmetrical. I will actually rapidly scroll through an entire class to see if anything jumps out as not looking "pretty" or "clean".

Am I wasting my time? Is there any value in this kind of behavior? Sometimes the functionality or design of the code won't even change, I'll just re-structure it so it looks nicer.

Am I just being totally OCD or is there some benefit hidden in this?

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