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You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand

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Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand

#151

Post by Backslasher »

overgard wrote: post #34

What is with all these people that are so interested in other people's workflow to the point of writing weirdly aggressive manifestos like this. "If you don't do it like me, you're wrong!" I would like to be the first person to state that I don't give a damn about your workflow . Do whatever you want!

I think these are discussions about workplace / team policy that get extended into a post.

I recognize these from different dev teams where it was agreed that a "how much AI" policy is needed, but the actual policy was very hard to settle on.

Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand

#152

Post by duskdozer »

bunderbunder wrote: post #16
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #3

TBH writing shell scripts (and automation tools generally) is the grunt work I most love it for. Git commits and PR descriptions? Those are probably best at least edited/tuned by humans. Because they're meant to be read by humans.

Our commit messages have become useless since we adopted a shared agent skill for making commits. The LLM tends to fill the messages with irrelevant details while still failing to mention what the change actually does.

Comments as well. It's exactly the type of commenting they taught us not to do because it was useless. I'm sure it's also a negative to the LLMs as well by polluting the memory with useless info.

Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand

#153

Post by duskdozer »

bloody-crow wrote: post #119
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, do whatever you want on your own projects. But on a team, I expect people to follow some basic decorum on standards for commit messages and code reviews. That was hard to enforce and get before (GitHub encourages bad practices) but it's bloody impossible now.

I actually think it's much easier now when most contributions are LLM-assisted or LLM-authored. Like, at my job we went from wild-west everyone uses their own commit message style to very nice uniformed one now when everyone's using Claude Code following the style enforced by AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md

Easier to have them follow a format, sure, but definitely not easier to have them provide useful information.

Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand

#154

Post by thiht »

pyrale wrote: post #70

I don't get these kinds of posts. Zero how-to, zero share about the tradeoffs the author took. It's just a random internet dude telling us how he thinks other people should feel about their work.

Ain’t it what the internet is for?

Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand

#155

Post by allarm »

nijave wrote: post #41
radlad wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best engineers hand-edit .git Edit: But actually, one of my favorite Git explainers is https://wildlyinaccurate.com/a-hackers-guide-to-git/

I write all my code in assembly on paper then manually translate into opcodes

That's exactly what I did when I was writing code in a paper notebook around 1995. Mainly because I didn't have a computer at home, and I wanted to program more than anything else in the world.

Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand

#156

Post by nijave »

g-b-r wrote: post #49
nijave wrote: post #31

Eh, agents commits are always too verbose. I don't need a 3 paragraph mini novel. Design can go in a design docs folder, project info goes in the issue tracker. The commit should be a short summary <1 paragraph for quick context

No, it should be short when there's little to say, and long when there's lots to say about things best written in a commit message

I suppose that's fair. The assumption here is things get linked back to the issue tracker and it's not very interesting boring business apps.

Anything technical tends to be a link back to discussion on someone else's issue tracker

Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand

#157

Post by nijave »

mr_mitm wrote: post #53
nijave wrote: post #31

Eh, agents commits are always too verbose. I don't need a 3 paragraph mini novel. Design can go in a design docs folder, project info goes in the issue tracker. The commit should be a short summary <1 paragraph for quick context

Just put your last sentence in your AGENTS.md then

There's too much nuance--it would take a dedicated skill
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