From Miguel Paraz:

Yup. It reinforces the idea of attributes and minimizes the problem
with same-named parameters and local variables.

>

(They should know that they can omit this. most of the time, but it's
still a good idea.)


Just be careful with constructors that set the field from a parameter, as in:
http://www.jspwiki.org/Wiki.jsp?page=WhyUsingThisIsBad