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Never looking at git history is like, not reading comments or something. It's an incredibly valuable resource for understanding why the existing code is the way it is.

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You didn't answer why. My code passes all the unit test and we almost always have real code using it immediately. The function works. Why am I reading it? The only thing I read are bug reports (usually a spec problem, not normally a logic bug) and new features, or test outputs

If someone complains that our system did something weird, sometimes it’s a mistake we can just fix, but sometimes it’s a non-obvious consequence of some requirement (which I might not have been aware of) that we have to explain to our consumer. It also helps a lot to tell whether it has been like that for a week or five years.

I can’t even imaging having a spec that fully answers anything like this; Microsoft tried for that level of detail but I found they couldn’t keep it up to date.

Because you'd want to know why code does what it does.

If a bug pops up, you'd want to know why some code exists and if the original premise of the code is as it should be or needs revision.

I think it's very rare that a developer receives all that information up front in a team. Eg. Old codebase, lost knowledge or people leaving.

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