One of the core practices I encourage in developers when joining a new team is shaping changes into small, focused, atomic commits. For folks that are used to committing code in a haphazard, laissez faire manner this is sometimes dismissed as pedantic fussiness: if the code works, it works and that’s what’s important! Well I strongly disagree. Here I want to present a few of the ways taking the time to shape small focused commits help you to be a more effective developer and ship better software.

First things first, let’s acknowledge the fact that doing this well does take a certain level of tooling knowledge and practice. That means getting comfortable selectively staging changes (git add --patch) and revising your working history as you go (git rebase --interactive). But once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature and not doing it will start to feel a bit icky, like skipping test coverage for a new piece of code, or not brushing your teeth before bed.