Comment by masklinn

> Why is it that some people get Git naturally

The only people I've ever seen "get Git naturally" were developers starting from the implementation details and working their way up (#0)[0].

Everybody else either worked very hard at it(#1)[1] or just rote-learned a list of commands(#2) that pretty much do what they want from which they don't deviate lest the wrath of the Git Gods fall upon them and they have to call upon the resident (#1) or heavens forbid the resident (#0) who'll usually start by berating them for failing to understand the git storage model.

> Well, Git is nothing like SVN and you'll always be missing something if you try to understand Git through SVN concepts.

Mercurial is also nothing like SVN, the problem is not the underlying concepts and storage model, it's that Git's "high-level UI" is a giant abstraction leak so you can't make sense of Git without understanding the underlying concepts and storage model, while you can easily do so for SVN or Mercurial.

[0] because the porcelain sort of makes sense in the context of the plumbing aka the storage model and implementation details

[1] because the porcelain in isolation is an incoherent mess with garbage man pages