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The number one audience for commit messages is yourself. If you don’t have respect for your future self, don’t expect me to have respect for you.
by koolba 11mo ago
The number one audience for commit messages is yourself.
If you don’t have respect for your future self, don’t expect me to have respect for you.
- esperent 11mo agoI've literally never gone over my old commit messages on any personal projects. The only time I've ever regretted not writing better messages on personal projects is when they eventually became shared. Which is like, twice, in a decade or so and wasn't even a big deal in those cases. So when I'm writing commit messages, it is exclusively for other people.
- apsurd 11mo agoThe messages are for other people, also it's like any type of writing: tremendous value in the process of writing. in that way, i'm agreeing with the parent, it is for yourself. The process of writing commit messages is useful to yourself. Being a good communicator is very commonly the main difference between "moving up" in one's career. Quotes because i don't want this to be a debate about IC vs management tracks.
- kemayo 11mo agoI actually have. I have a bunch of long-running projects, and it has sometimes been useful to be able to look back to the commit that added some behavior I'm not sure about now and go "oh, okay, this was part of a commit in 2014 where I said I was doing X". (And sure, you could also say that I should have added better documentation back in 2014...)
- fluidcruft 11mo agoI usually use blame to find commits in those situations.