Comment by kissgyorgy
4 years ago
This is because there are intangible aspects of the model/theory in the programmer’s heads, which can’t be expressed in code and documentation
But it can be expressed in commit messages and "why" comments! This is very important a lot of developers don't understand and want to just "get on with their life" after writing the commit message "fix".
If used properly, version control can be the repository for all ideas stored historically and can be replayed. With well-written commit messages and well-formatted commits, whole ideas can be followed and mistakes can be recognized years after the code has been written. I have seen multiple times when we recognized "oh, they wanted to do this or that, but they forgot to change this", so we could fix it, because we understood the original idea someone had 10 years ago!
I believe, THE PRODUCT of Software Engineers work is not source code, but COMMIT MESSAGES!
This works to some extent, however it's pretty rare that engineers go more than 1 commit deep into the git blame.
No it's not at all. I do it daily. You have to learn the tools you use every day!
While I agree that good commit messages help, I think a lot of this info can't be reasonably conveyed through them.
While the analogy might not be perfect, it's kind of like trying to teach someone how to play the piano by asking them to read a book.