I'm mostly with you, except, `git reset --hard` is relatively easy to recover from. `git reflog` generally can fix most `git reset --hard` commands.

On the other hand. `git checkout .` with unstaged changes tends to be the most common way I've seen people lose code via git.

That's fair. Both overwrite (edit: seemingly overwrite) (un)staged changes. But `checkout` requires less hyphens.

I feel like all of this would be resolved if my boy Linus had renamed `git add` to `git stage` or `git prepare` or something more clear.

Or added some warning, like "all this stuff you haven't committed yet; it's not managed by `git` so don't try to overwrite it all using `git` until you've committed some of it."

This is another argument why "not squashing is bad"; because it discourages people from committing.