I have a Master's in Computer Science.
I have built production apps that real humans use with their real human hands. I have written documentation. I have left thoughtful, multi-paragraph code review comments explaining time complexity to junior developers. I once spent 45 minutes choosing the right variable name.
And yet - if you run git log on any of my repos - any of them - you will find, buried somewhere around week three, a commit message that simply says:
ok
Not "fix: resolve null pointer exception in auth middleware." Not even "bug fix." Just... ok. Like I was responding to a text message from my codebase and could not be bothered to say more.
I am not ashamed. Well. I am a little ashamed. But I know I am not alone.
Every developer's git log is a crime scene. And like every good crime scene, it tells a story - the story of a person slowly losing their mind, one push at a time.
Let the investigation begin.
Stage 1 - No Prior Offences
Day one. Fresh repo. Blank README. A dangerous amount of optimism. You have read about conventional commits. You have strong opinions about squashing. You are going to do this properly - this time for real.
Exhibit A - your first week:
feat: implement user authentication with JWT and full test coverage
chore: configure ESLint, Prettier, and Husky pre-commit hooks
docs: add README with architecture diagram and setup guide
refactor: extract auth logic into reusable middleware with error boundaries
Look at that. Conventional commit prefixes. A Husky pre-commit hook so you can never commit garbage. An architecture diagram. An architecture diagram.
You were so young. So full of hope. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Stage 2 - First Offence
Two weeks later. The excitement is gone. You have hit your first genuinely confusing bug, rewritten the same function four times, and you just need to push this so you can close the laptop and eat something. The commit message can be descriptive later. There will be time later.
Exhibit B - week three:
fix: bug
update stuff
changes
wip
more changes
Which bug? What stuff? What changes, compared to what? You will run git blame on this six months from now, find "update stuff," and feel a specific kind of despair that has no name in any language.
The Husky pre-commit hook, by the way, is already disabled. You told yourself it was just temporary.
Stage 3 - All Units Respond
The demo is in four hours. Nothing works. You have tried everything logical and several things that are not. You are no longer writing commit messages - you are sending distress signals into the void.
Exhibit C - four hours before the demo:
PLEASE WORK
why
WHY
aaaaaa
trying something
trying something else
ok different approach
These are not commit messages. These are the five stages of grief compressed into a git log. If future archaeologists ever discover your repository, they will know exactly when the deadline was. It is right there in the timestamps.
Funny thing - "PLEASE WORK" is actually more informative than "update stuff." At least future you knows the developer was desperate. "Update stuff" tells you absolutely nothing.
Stage 4 - Tampering With Evidence
The deadline passed. Something worked - mostly. Then something broke in production. You fixed it. Then the fix broke something else. You are now fixing the fix that fixed the fix. Your git history has become recursive with no base case.
Exhibit D - the fix spiral:
fix previous fix
fix fix fix
actually fix it this time
revert fix and try again
revert revert and reapply fix differently
Five consecutive commits containing the word "fix" is the universe's way of telling you that you have not understood the actual problem yet. Step away. Drink water. Come back. The bug will still be there, but so will your sanity.
Stage 5 - False Testimony
This is the most dangerous stage because it looks completely innocent from the outside. The commit message sounds reasonable. A colleague reading it would nod and move on. But you know exactly what you did.
Exhibit E - the wolf in sheep's clothing:
minor changes
small cleanup
quick refactor
slight adjustment
"minor changes" - diff shows 847 additions and 1,203 deletions across 47 files. Entire auth system quietly rewritten. A folder that three modules depended on silently deleted. Two new dependencies added. One environment variable renamed in a way that will break staging tomorrow morning at 9am in front of everyone.
If you see "minor changes" in a pull request, do not approve it. Read every single line. Something has gone terribly wrong and the author is hoping you will not notice.
Stage 6 - The Confession
Seven hours on this bug. You have tried seventeen things. One of them worked and you have no idea which one. You just need to commit and sleep. You will write proper messages tomorrow.
Exhibit F - the versioning spiral:
final
final_v2
final_ACTUAL
final_ACTUAL_final
final_ACTUAL_final_v2
ok this is actually final now I promise
final (for real this time)
Hot take: no commit containing the word "final" has ever, in the entire history of software, actually been final. Not once. The moment you type it, something breaks and you need one more. There is always one more.
Stage 7 - Case Closed - We Give Up
We do not speak about Stage 7 in polite company. But we have all been here. Usually at 2am. Usually alone. Usually after something that should have taken thirty minutes has taken six hours and three existential crises.
Exhibit G - classified:
asdfgh
.
ok
🙂
hjkl
[spacebar]
The spacebar commit is the saddest of all. Someone opened the message field, typed nothing, pressed space once so the field was not technically empty, and pushed. That is a person who has given up not just on documentation but on the entire concept of human communication.
Pour one out for them. They shipped it anyway.
The honest truth
Hot take: a perfect git history means either you have never shipped anything under real pressure, or you found interactive rebase before anyone looked. The rest of us have "aaaaaa" somewhere in our logs. That is fine. The code still shipped.
That said - maybe reinstall Husky. Actually this time.
The worst commit message I have ever written was just:
pls. No context. No explanation. Just a quiet prayer to the git gods. It worked. I still do not know why.
Now it is your turn - what is the worst commit message you have ever written? Drop it in the comments. No judgment zone, I promise. The more chaotic the better.
