gitgood

You've just described computers. It's possible to get into a bad state because git can't read your mind, and, at the end of the day, it is incumbent upon you, the programmer, to make the computer do what you want. That is our responsibility as practitioners.

You need to think about what you're actually trying to accomplish, and that requires having a mental model of how the tool works. And no, I don't mean under the hood, I mean stuff like "what does a rebase do?" and "how do branches work?"

The Git Book is a great resource for this. I recommend reading it and trying the examples over and over until they stick. I promise, git is not inscrutable.

You're welcome to switch back to CVS or RCS at any time. You're also welcome to deal with their specific tradeoffs.

This is embarrassing. Seriously, please learn the basics of your tools.

I don't struggle with git, and I can assure you, I am not brilliant. I do, however, refuse to give up when something seems hard, and I refuse to ask the computer to be easier for me. (Understandably, I started programming computers to make them do what I wanted them to do, not to sit and whine when they didn't.)

I'm always kind of aghast at the number of people who not only don't know git, but who cannot or will not learn it over years, or even decades.

Listen, I'm not that smart, and I managed to figure out how to solve even gnarly git issues one summer during an internship... 11 years ago? Ish? Now, I know git well, and not just "the three commands". I would be, honestly, so ashamed if it were a decade on and I still hadn't committed to learning this fundamental tool.

Version control is a hard problem, fundamentally, and a tool for experts will always take more effort to understand. I mean, aren't we supposed to be the software experts? If people can't learn git, I wouldn't trust them with the even harder parts of software development.

But this is a common attitude in industry now, unfortunately: a petulant demand for things to be easier, and for someone else to do the learning. Is it any wonder software today is so bad?