git blame shows you who wrote the code. It does not show you why they wrote it at 11 PM the night before a deadline with incomplete requirements and a broken staging environment.

Context matters more than authorship.

Used well, git blame is archeology. It helps you understand the history of a decision. Used poorly, it’s a finger-pointing tool that makes people afraid to commit code.

Instead of "who wrote this?" ask "what was happening when this was written?" The commit message might tell you. The Jira ticket definitely won’t, but check anyway.

Teams that use blame constructively ship faster. When people aren’t afraid of being blamed, they’re more willing to flag problems early, take risks on improvements, and write honest commit messages.

The goal isn’t to find who broke it. The goal is to understand why it broke and make it harder to break again.

— JP, from the void.