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Honestly, though, looking more than 10 years back in revision control is usually only for curiosity. Whatever historical reasons existed for code to be a certa
by mlyle 2y ago
Honestly, though, looking more than 10 years back in revision control is usually only for curiosity. Whatever historical reasons existed for code to be a certain way are likely impenetrable or no longer relevant.
- iforgotpassword 2y agoNah, I've often found the opposite to be true. Granted, it requires proper commit messages and code comments, but I've had my fair share of "oooh I see" moments when I encountered nonsensical crazy code. Sometimes it reassured me that it could safely go, other times it revealed a whole new dimension nobody was really aware of anymore that then got a good chunk of comment space in the code base.
- mlyle 2y agoWell, it really requires: A) great commit messages, B) comments that are worse than the commit message so that you have to go scavenge in revision control, C) a single or very few commits where the craziness happened, and D) a codebase that hasn't drifted enough that this signal is hard to find. I've had poor luck spelunking for reasons in things like the Linux kernel. 90% of my revision control effort looks at things from the past couple of years, and before then it rapidly becomes diminishing returns.