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| title | pubDate | permalink |
|---|---|---|
| Commit and push something every day | 2022-12-02 | daily/2022/12/02/commit-and-push-something-every-day |
One of the significant changes that I've found and that's benefitted me whilst developing is to commit and push something every day.
It doesn't need to be a whole feature. It could be a new class with its passing tests, but it isn't used anywhere yet, so it won't affect the existing functionality, or it could be a new test for some existing functionality that was missing previously.
It could be a small refactor - renaming a variable or class name that makes some code easier to read or removing some commented-out code that isn't doing anything other than adding visual clutter.
It could be updating some documentation or writing a technical document; if you keep those in your version control repository, that would help you implement the following change or to make the documentation clearer for the next reader - whether that's you or someone else.
Committing something at least once a day creates a different mindset to "I'll write everything and push it when it's done".
It makes you break up large tasks into multiple smaller ones and set mini-deadlines for yourself. I used to do the same when I commuted to work on a train and had a task for a freelance project to complete before I arrived. I used to think, "What can I start, finish and commit before I get there?" instead of leaving something incomplete.
You don't need to push your change to mainline. If you use the "Ship, Show, Ask" approach then you could commit to a temporary branch that you either merge yourself once you know it passes the checks, or to show or get feedback from other team members.
Practicing this becomes a habit, and if you're doing test-driven development and committing after every passing test or refactor, you'll find yourself pushing numerous changes a day.
This became my normal approach instead of having long-lived feature branches or lots of unpushed local commits.
I much prefer making as small charges as possible and pushing them as often as I can.