I agree. It doesn't matter what order a line of code was added to the system in, it matters why it was added. When I can take the 15 commits I played with solutions (adding code, nuking code, etc) and slim it down the the one set of code that just works, I've saved everybody who looks at it significant effort in figuring out what I was thinking.
There is some information lost in the process, since you can never see what I did that failed, but if you were to add up the amount of time spent redoing failed experiments and subtract it from the amount if time spent wading through experimental, dead commits, my experience says you wind up with a large balance of time wading through junk. Or those experimental changes never get committed, so you the developer wastes time copying files around to make backups and you still don't know the failed experiments.
There is some information lost in the process, since you can never see what I did that failed, but if you were to add up the amount of time spent redoing failed experiments and subtract it from the amount if time spent wading through experimental, dead commits, my experience says you wind up with a large balance of time wading through junk. Or those experimental changes never get committed, so you the developer wastes time copying files around to make backups and you still don't know the failed experiments.