[sofal]

You have it exactly backwards, and I think it gets to the core of why people get so unnecessarily confused about git. The underlying data model is both much simpler than the interface and crucial to understand. If you treat git as a collection of memorized command recipes the same way you did with SVN or CVS, you're going to have a bad time. The underlying DAG needs to be top of mind when interacting with git, as it best represents the inherent complexity of the problem that code repositories are meant to solve.