For most projects, history gets used less and less the older it is. That's also true of the code. A lot gets abandoned or scarcely used.
But for the most important, widely used, long-lived projects, things are different. You come to appreciate history when you have legacy code that you want to change and you'd like to figure out what the authors were thinking when they wrote it. (Unfortunately, too often, the version control history wasn't kept at all.)
I think that we often assume our code is more important than it is, so we use ceremonies that aren't appropriate. But this is hard to judge in advance. The people writing long-lived code often didn't know that they were writing it.
But for the most important, widely used, long-lived projects, things are different. You come to appreciate history when you have legacy code that you want to change and you'd like to figure out what the authors were thinking when they wrote it. (Unfortunately, too often, the version control history wasn't kept at all.)
I think that we often assume our code is more important than it is, so we use ceremonies that aren't appropriate. But this is hard to judge in advance. The people writing long-lived code often didn't know that they were writing it.