[opsy_]

I think (from working with git newbies) the core difficulty is not understanding the Git's fundamental data structure. If you have computer science training / data structure understanding, once you realize (1) Commits are nodes in a graph (2) branches are just pointers to a specific node, you're off to the races.

From there, I find it straightforward to conceptualize all the different commands. Commit/push/reset/merge/pull/rebase/etc are all just different graph manipulations. There's usually multiple ways to achieve the end graph you want.

If you don't understand the data structure, you have no good mental model and it's just a series of ritual. If something goes off the ritual path, you're in trouble.