Do You Have a Code Hygiene Obsession? 4 Types of Code Cleanliness Explained

Many developers develop personal habits while coding, and one of the most common is a strong sense of code hygiene —the desire to keep source code tidy and well‑structured.

The author, referred to as “He Er Ge,” collected a set of code‑hygiene symptoms and grouped them into four distinct types, illustrated with several images. Readers are invited to check the pictures and see which type matches their own habits.

Although obsessing over code cleanliness can feel time‑consuming, the article argues that in later project stages—such as scaling the business, onboarding new teammates, reusing functionality, or tracing bugs—maintaining clean code brings significant convenience and boosts overall team efficiency.

The piece quotes a line from Programmer's Path to Mastery : “Don’t live with broken windows.” It urges developers to fix bad designs, wrong decisions, and messy code as soon as they see them, preventing technical debt from accumulating.

Finally, the author acknowledges that excessive code mess can make even the original author unable to understand their own work after a few months, and encourages readers to share additional code‑hygiene quirks in the comments.