Really? That seems like an extraordinarily obtuse way to understand code. I would think comments directly the source files would be more useful. Commit history shows how they arrived at that result and that's what I would rather see there.
- a = 1;
- a = 7;
- a = 3;
or
2) one commit that says:
a = 3;
My point is that experimentation is slightly different from changing your mind about the whole implementation. It is the same as writing your homework. You have a separate piece of paper where you make your experiments.
_All the time_. I read all the commits in the codebase I'm responsible for. I need to keep track of what people are doing and how the system is changing. This is also on top of the need for code review and ensuring each patch is correct.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_commit#Atomic_Commit_Con...