Eh, I've seen some pretty long and ugly commit histories. Finding the useful snapshot in there might be tricky on a very old project, plus the added problem of

Eh, I've seen some pretty long and ugly commit histories. Finding the useful snapshot in there might be tricky on a very old project, plus the added problem of not knowing to look for it (how would you know which old version was the "simple, good" old version?). Usually leaving commented-out code in source control is bad, but in this case it's good.