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- Hacker News
- I'm resisting linking to several posts I've written on these lines before - I very much agree that - at least personally - writing the commit message helps me work through what's changed and most importantly why.
When AI writes the code for me, I then end up still writing the commit message so I can take ownership of the change myself, make sure I can explain why the change was made and see if there's any missing context that may lead to a different result
I did find that distilling some of my style choices to a `commit-style` skill helps when an AI writes a commit message (for me to rewrite) to be not quite as generic, but it's still needing my ownership to get it right
by jamietanna - I sometimes struggle to decide whether to put an explanation in a commit message, in the docs (say in an ADR). I tend to save everything as docs because files are a more “universal” interface, so to speak. They’re in plain sight and harder to miss.
I guess the main advantages of Git history are that it’s (1) uneditable and (2) directly linked to a specific commit.
by zahrevsky - I like git-notes (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes) for this sort of annotations and context. It's a nice balance - adjacent to commits, follows branch structure, easy to instrument, doesn't muddy the commit history.
Being able to stick a bit of directive text somewhere durable at any point in time has been surprisingly convenient for steering LLMs, as well.
by dmtry - > When the AI doesn’t know the ‘why’ part, it comes up with its own reasoning. I find that dangerous. When we read that later, it may not make sense, because the real reason was completely different.
Even more dangerous: when the text _does_ make sense, despite being detached from reality.
by evnp - I was forced to give up on commit messages long before AI, because other people were so bad at them that I happily agreed that all PRs should squash commits.
At least then the squashed messages were usually pretty decent. But then people started using AI (or AI started using people) to create absolutely massive commit messages that are impossible to skim in git blame and overall very bad for human consumption.
AI has made massive strides in virtually every other way. Why do they continue to write in a wasteful, human-hostile way?
I think we'd have to be be very naive not to suspect that this is intentional. AI companies have a stated goal of replacing humans in the software development process, and they're actively making the process itself inhospitable for humans.
They are injecting massive amounts of text into their customers' development process, which then becomes tokens that their customers will then pay them to process over and over again. It's like a CO2 scrubber that emits CO2.
by dkarl - On top of this, it pays off to write the commit messages before the code
https://arialdomartini.github.io/pre-emptive-commit-comments
- Long ago I changed the default commit message to include headers “Why?” and “How?” to remind myself that I need to explain why a change is made (what this article focuses on), and how it is made (different implementation approaches considered). I followed this format for a long time. I was in the top 1% for commit message length at the company.
Tangent: I once worried about things breaking when commit messages got too long. I tried really long commit messages and nothing broke: https://github.com/kccqzy/long-commit-messages/commit/ccfda4...
by kccqzy - Writing is thinking in every situation, not just limited to commit messages. This is a fact that I'm concerned people are forgetting, or worse never understood to begin with.by WD-42