[scpotter]

>In my point of view, you cannot separate "the way you use the tool" with the "tool itself".

Love this. The question then becomes do you change the too, the way you use it, or some of each.

>A tool should not be designed only to "allow" people to do certain things.

You lost me here, because that's the definition of design. There are many hammer designs, some more general purpose like the claw hammer and many others (tack, 2lb) with a more limited intended purpose. Git is designed for very large scale teams, and staging seems to be integral to that. The paper asserts the complexity of staging is unneeded, but in my view doesn't adequately demonstrate that to be true for large teams. The paper goes on to describe an alternate, simpler product which better meets the needs of simpler users using and alternate, incompatible conceptual design. This is fine, but I'd be more impressed if it started by fully demonstrating a concept is not needed for the intended users before removing that concept and then described a pathway from a simpler concept to the fully complex conceptual model.