this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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There's a bigger issue than your commit message if you don't even know what you just coded and are committing.
You see, sometimes I code something, go to bed before finishing it, come back, decide not to commit because then I'd have to think of a commit message and I just want to code, start working on an unrelated feature, do that for a couple days, get distracted by life stuff and put the project down for a few weeks/months, rinse and repeat, and then I finally get around to writing a commit message because I'm about to start a huge change and I want a restore point and I'm like. Okay, it's been like 3 months since my last commit, I'm pretty sure my code can now do something it couldn't 3 months ago but come on, I can't even remember what I had for lunch last Thursday
I'm well aware this is terrible practice but I don't know how to stop doing it
Commit more often. Maybe work in a different feature branch, and don’t be afraid to commit your half-working crappy code. If it’s a personal project/fork, it’s totally acceptable to commit often with bad commit names and small unfinished changes: you can always amend/squash the commits later. That’s how I tend to work: create a new branch, work on the feature, rebase and merge (fast forward, no merge commit). Also, maybe don’t jump around working on random features :P
Jumping around to random features is how my ADHD brain works most efficiently.
Good news, TDD is methylphenidate of software development!
but...but new feature shiny
Fr tho this is all excellent advice
You can help yourself a lot here by making commits every time you make a meaningful change. A feature doesn't need to be complete to commit major checkpoints along the path to completion. That's what feature branches are for. Commit often. It'll help you think of messages, and it'll help you recover in the case of catastrophe.
you can setup a on-save script to force you to commit when the number of changes is greater than a certain number from the previous commit.
I just get too excited about actually implementing/fixing something (random things that I see along the way) more than commit ceremony (nobody will care about it in my project anyway other than one random guy who gave the repo a star)
Nah, I'm that guy, I gave your repo a star for the effort, but I'm not reading your history.
it means you commit too infrequently. your commit messages should be able to describe what u just did within 10 words.