"And then you can took a look at the commit messages and you cringed more than a little".

Commit history in cowboy projects tends to be really bad.

I've seen a lot of "not so professional" comments in them like:

* empty message

* single word message like "update" or "hack"

* onomatopoeia (arghhh!!!!, yargla!!!!)

* all upper case commit message raging against the company and its lack of recognition