[mschaef]

How do you expect things to work? This expectation that complex tools should be so obvious that they can be used without a book seems pretty odd to me. There aren't many other serious engineering disciplines where people enter it with that kind of mindset.

The source code for a system is one of the more valuable assets produced by a software development team, and managing source code is heavily about managing risk. Losing source code means losing work (money and time). Deploying source code too early means exposing the users of your system to code that might not be adequately tested. In distributed development, accepting unsigned patches means that your system might include untrustworthy code... the list goes on and on.

Part of the reason that git is complex (and this can be said about any serious source code management system) is that it solves complex problems. Fifteen years ago, Jamie Zawinski said this about Mozilla... I think it's also true for git:

"Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla is not big because it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. "

-- http://www.jwz.org/doc/easter-eggs.html