title: Can excessive use of final hurt more than do good?
body: <p>Why are people so emphatic about making every variable within a class "final"? I don't believe that there is any true benefit to adding final to private local variables, or really to use final for anything other than constants and passing variables into anonymous inner classes. </p>
  
  <p>I'm not looking to start any sort of flame war, I just honestly want to know why this is so important to some people. Am I missing something?</p>