[mikekchar]

Just to support your philosophy a little bit, most git users are very surprised to learn that a "branch" is a single commit. When they need to do something where this distinction matters, in my experience they are usually stymied. Using a precise model where it doesn't sweep the details under the carpet is good for me. However, I suspect that it will limit adoption to a certain extent. Pretending that something is the way you wish it to be is pretty common in the world ;-) Refusing to use tools that show you truths that you do not wish to acknowledge is similarly common, I think. Still I appreciate the precision and if you are targeting users like me, I certainly won't complain!

[umvi]

A branch is more accurately a text pointer pointing to a single commit

[TeMPOraL]

And this is a crucial point. To understand git, you need to understand data structures strung from pointers. Branch then being a [pointer to a] single commit makes perfect sense, just like a linked list being a pointer to the first element makes perfect sense.

[rswail]

You could even call it a "reference", or a "ref" for short :)