git blame
Ranked 9 of 9 version control features by recommenders
Recommended for quickly finding the commit and author that last changed a line. Critics say it shows who touched code, not why.
Recommended for quickly finding the commit and author that last changed a line. Critics say it shows who touched code, not why.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Little effort to trace changes
“It's easy to verify if the snippet has changed since the comment.”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “The Compiler Is Your Best Friend, Stop Lying to It” “"git blame" designed to do exactly that with almost no effort”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Pre-commit hooks are fundamentally broken” Shows commit and commit message
“It tells you the commit and the commit message.”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 in “At the end you use `git bisect`” “"git blame" designed to do exactly that with almost no effort”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Pre-commit hooks are fundamentally broken” Go-to tool, more useful than timestamps
“git blame is more useful than the file timestamp in any case.”
Comment from 25 Jan 2026 in “I built a 2x faster lexer, then discovered I/O was the real bottleneck” “it's probably the first tool I reach for”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Cruller: Bun's Zig Runtime, Continued on Zig 0.16” Useful months later for old code
“This also makes git-blame 6 months later way more useful”
Comment from 13 Sep 2026 in “From Git to Fossil (2025)” “It's easy to verify if the snippet has changed since the comment.”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “The Compiler Is Your Best Friend, Stop Lying to It”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Doesn't explain why code is buggy
“Git blame doesn't show you why line 22 has a bug in it. It only shows you who touched it last.”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “At the end you use `git bisect`” Breaks on project-wide linter changes
“falls apart on someone running a new linter config across the project”
Comment from 23 Sep 2026 in “Markdown in /src” Still rather crude overall
“Git blame is great yes, but it's still rather crude.”
Comment from 23 Sep 2026 in “Markdown in /src”
Other version control features people recommend
The four most recommended other version control features, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Git worktree | 58 | 21 | 73% | 11 | — | Approved |
| git rebase | 24 | 13 | 65% | 9 | — | — |
| git rerere | 19 | 4 | 83% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Git submodules | 14 | 13 | 52% | 7 | — | — |
| git blameThis page | 8 | 2 | 80% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Git blame is great yes, but it's still rather crude.”
“falls apart on someone running a new linter config across the project”
“This also makes git-blame 6 months later way more useful”
“it's probably the first tool I reach for”
“git blame is more useful than the file timestamp in any case.”
“It's easy to verify if the snippet has changed since the comment.”
“"git blame" designed to do exactly that with almost no effort”
“Git blame doesn't show you why line 22 has a bug in it. It only shows you who touched it last.”
“It tells you the commit and the commit message.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.