I think you're misinterpreting my post. I completely agree, you're absolutely right, but there's a huge different between what you're saying and what the gp was: that usability should not be a consideration for these tools.

I do understand, in quite a bit of depth (which I'm sure is still far from complete), how Git works. I still prefer to use Mercurial because it doesn't require me to be continuously aware of the dangers of those internals on a day-to-day basis - it doesn't supply me with a loaded foot gun. Sadly, I use Git every day, and rarely Mercurial, because that's what the masses have chosen and I've found using in-between compat tools not to be worth the extra hassle for me.

OK, I can agree: git is not as safe, mistake-proof, or consistent as it could be.

What I like about git is that it gives a simple algebra of patches (diffs), and allows almost any sensible operation over them.

It would be great to build a different CLI on top of the same data structures (and maybe the same plumbing) that would expose a more consistent and usable interface, while allowing for [most of] the same capabilities, and preserving interoperability. I suppose git-hg tries to achieve something similar, too.

For me, much of the pain of git CLI was alleviated first by a set of aliases, and then by using magit from within emacs.