[NortySpock]

I think what you're doing is fine especially if you're just coding for yourself. I'm perfectly happy with slightly more expressive commit messages like "LoadData appears to be working; still hacking away at TransmorgifyData", followed eventually by "stabilized TransmorgifyData".

I think it's when you start syncing with other people over multiple days that people start insisting that a commit should (compile), be atomic, tested, etc. What they're really looking for at that point is that incoming changes be easy to understand and modular and possibly easy to omit if some code change is causing them trouble for a moment.