You'll never hear me say that git's interface is good, but this seems to be blowing things way out of proportion. I haven't seen someone blow up and recreate a git repo in maybe a decade.

I've definitely pulled out the BFG here and there to clean up credentials but that's an issue in any VCS.

Maybe I'm biased because I'm "better able to get a repo out of a broken state", but for the record it's definitely not because I've "memorised a few more commands".