Just associating the code with a bug or feature request often helps the next guy intuit why you did something.
One job we kept reintroducing the same bugs and the customer was furious. I started reading the version histories more closely and figured out two developers were dueling over two separate bugs in the same block of code. Each would reintroduce the other' bug. Since then and due to some other experiences, I spend time looking at how the code arrived to deduce why it was the way it was. I pride myself on a low regression rate and this helps a lot.
Note that if you value quality over quantity, you're self
-selecting for writing less code but in more critical parts of the application, like libraries or cross cutting concerns like security or localization. And you also have to accept that if you insist that everyone on the team coded like you then nothing would ever get done. The last bit is, IME, the hardest part.
Once I had a situation where I was the developer assigned to a particular interface and my code was synonymous with the code.
Unbeknownst to me, a defect was entered and another programmer made a change. It wasn't really a bugfix but more like a change in the desired functionality. His change worked perfectly well but I wasn't made aware that someone else had changed the code. When I was assigned another defect, I used the version of the code that I had from my last checkout to make the change. When I checked in, I overwrote his change.
We quickly discovered this during testing and I reverted my change. I used his last checked in code as the basis for my change and all was right with the world but we had a confused user and two confused programmers for a couple of hours.
I'm surprised your version control solution let this situation arise considering this is exactly the kinds of problem version control aims to resolve. Usually you only hear of these things happening when you have multiple devs FTP / SFTPing files to a shared repository rather than following a managed check out and check in procedure via your preferred VCS frontend.
