[PaulDavisThe1st]

If you really believe this, then I don't believe that you understand what the job of a powerful revision control system is.

The "cognitive burden" of git comes as much from the tasks that it is occasionally required to make possible than anything else.

If the only git commands you ever use are push, pull, commit and checkout then its a very simple system with very little cognitive burden. But one day, you may need to perform a truly complex task with git that a simpler system with much less cognitive burden would just not allow.

I do not understand how "data interchange formats" are an issue here. What do you want to inter-operate with?

[wutbrodo]

I generally agree with you that much of git's conceptual complexity is irreducible if you want to retain git's power. But there's plenty of examples of poor-quality and inconsistent porcelain that provide no extra power. Indeed, these "UI smells" mostly offer no benefit at all.

Note that we're specifically discussing the theoretical reason for git's usability woes. The costs of actually fixing them in git aren't trivial, of course.