General method placement [closed]

Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.

---

Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.

Closed 4 years ago.

Improve this question 开发者_JS百科

Is it best practice to place method bodies before or after they are called ? I generally place them after; interested in what others are doing ?

---

I prefer after. The reason for this is because it makes the flow of your code more logical. Code flows from top to bottom anyway, so it's logical that methods called appear after the current method.

This has the added advantage of the entry point of your program/class being at the top, which is where you start looking anyway.

---

When developing Java, I place the method bodies after they are called. This will typically result in classes that have a small number of public methods at the top, followed by quite a few private methods at the bottom. I think this makes the class easier to read and understand: you just need to read those few public methods at the top to understand what the class does — in many cases you can stop reading once you get to the private methods.

I also note that Java IDEs typically place the method body after the current method when you refactor code. For example in Eclipse, if you select a block of code and click Refactor | Extract Method... it will place that selected code in a new method below the current one.

---

It is entirely a matter of personal preference. For most people, the code navigation facilities of a modern IDE mean that it hardly makes any difference how the methods are ordered.

---

The method placement is largely irrelevant to me (of course in case of some static methods that need to be defined before invoked):

1. The code formatters are usually in place (and running automatically - if not for you, turn them on) which results in the source being ordered nicely by type of the method and then alphabetically, rather without the regard to the method call sequence
2. I use the modern IDE, where finding the proper method is done in a different way than sequentially going through the whole source