I'm just going to answer this one candidly. Yes, you are doing something wrong. Immediately: the commit history is useful to understand the context in which a bug was introduced, because it's the best context to understand the _reason_ the mistake was maybe, which is a really good way to prevent regressions. But more generally: when an entire industry has arrived at an accepted practice, you the junior developer (sorry, 5 years is _nothing_: you need to be told this too) have a chance to pick up on it.

Have you heard "have you played guitar for 20 years, or have you played guitar 20 times for a year?" Time only helps with accumulating wisdom if you let it.