[legends2k]

If someone who made the changes can't explain things clearly, I'd even wager that they didn't understand what they're changing properly. A good commit message is needed as the author might be gone but software is maintained for decades. Productivity is easy, writing a good message isn't, as the latter seems to be hard for many and it's telling of their understanding of systems they change.

[Kwpolska]

Many teams will just use squash merges to avoid wasting time on commit messages and end up with just one commit to the main branch and cleaner history.

[nsteel]

When I'm having to wade back through previous commits trying to debug a problem, there's nothing I hate more than finding someone's large squashed commit. Instead of using automated bisect tooling, I have to try and understand what they did and untangle it. This might be an area of the codebase I'm unfamiliar with and it'll take even longer. Compared to this, writing a few extra commit messages costs nothing. I really don't get it.

[mkesper]

That's like returning to publishing tarballs instead of having single, revertable commits.