Op 24-06-16 om 19:48 schreef Carl Meyer:
To be clear, the recommended git style is not present tense, it is
imperative mood. So it should _not_ be "Fixes #12345 -- Regulates the
frobnicator", it should be "Fix #12345 -- Regulate the frobnicator."
Everybody seems to be in favour. I'll allow myself a small question mark
anyway.
Why? Well, django is well-known for its excellent documentation. Take
for instance the release notes. Here's a snippet:
"Django now offers password validation to help prevent the usage of weak
passwords by users."
That is how we communicate with our users.
Now back to commit messages and code. Code should be written for humans
reading it, not for computers executing it, right? Readability counts.
Now if I read the history of a file I'd expect to read something that's
pretty readable to me as a developer. I expect to read what happened:
"Added password validation to help prevent the usage of..."
Instead I'll now see commit messages like this:
"Add password validation to prevent the usage of..."
Linguistically, I'm getting an imperative order to do something. And I
have to translate it to a sentence that actually makes sense. Every
django programmer has to make that mental switch/translation.
Is that a cost we want to pay? Does it fit in with our tradition of
providing good documentation? Are we taking linguistic advise from the
people who brought us git's user interface instead of from our English
teachers?
We don't have to order git to do something, we have to communicate what
we've done to fellow programmers.
I'm not a native English speaker, so I might be missing some nuances.
Perhaps it is less weird if you're a native speaker.
Reinout
--
Reinout van Rees http://reinout.vanrees.org/
rein...@vanrees.org http://www.nelen-schuurmans.nl/
"Learning history by destroying artifacts is a time-honored atrocity"
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