Most of the time ROI is not there just like with unit tests.

You don’t need 98% of commit messages ever again.

Yes when you need those 2% most likely it is for important reasons but usually not so important to make all the other mulled over.

The 2% of cases when you need the commit log (or more importantly: someone else who inherits your code...) justifies writing good messages imho.

If you make a change to your codebase, normally you know what you want to achieve and why (otherwise... what are you even doing?). A commit message is just putting that in writing... that only takes a few seconds, often less than it takes to write the code.

So it's just a good habit to have. It forces you to think more about the changes you do & why, so it makes you a better software developer. Creating any new habit always takes some energy initially, but it's worth it.

I don't find commit messages useful for historical reasons (git log), I squash them anyway when merging PR. Commit messages are very helpful to a reviewer to get a necessary context and intent behind the change. Without it, I need to figure out it my self when reviewing. It is very easy to get a habit of committing often and in AI era i don't write commits anymore. So there is no excuse.