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A Koan is "a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment"

I think that kinda implicitly means the author considers git to be either paradoxical or illogical. That seems even more clear from the last two paragraphs of "The Hobgoblin".

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That's a reference to an Emerson quote; if I remember rightly it's "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". I suspect the implication is that only little minds expect consistency... but over and above Emerson being a questionable source for UI design principles, he qualifies it. The quote isn't "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

I didn't read the hobgoblin the same way as the author being purely critical. I read it as a defense: a similarity between commands would make it easier to choose the wrong one. Removing a branch is a more destructive than deleting a file, so it should be a command chosen with conscious care rather than muscle memory.

That's the absolute opposite conclusion from what the author intended.

Are you the author? Or, if not, did the author specify their intended conclusions in additional material somewhere?

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