[gspr]

> Do people actually read commit messages? I don't have much experience working on large projects with a larger team

I find them super useful even for personal, my-eyes-only code! They really help answering "why the hell did I write this line of code like that when this alternative version would be much simpler?". It usually goes "oh, there's the commit that changed it from the obvious thing to the weird thing", and then if I've been a good me, the commit message describes the rationale.

Yes, code comments can serve some of the same purpose, but they typically document why code is the way it is, not change of said code.