The commands johnmaguire2013 listed are the ones usually recommended for beginners and I have found them easy to understand.

"git branch [name]" is for creating branches; it tells you if the branch already exists. Pretty easy to understand.

"git checkout [name]" is for checking out branches; it tells you if you're already on that branch.

You can run these sequentially and it works fine; there's no need for `git checkout -b [branchname]`.

I think there is sometimes some productivity porn involved in discussions of git, where people feel really strongly that everything should be doable in one line, and also be super intuitive. It's a bit like the difference between `mkdir foo && cd "$_"` on the command line, vs just doing mkdir and cd sequentially. IMO the latter is easier to understand, but some experienced folks seem to get upset that it requires typing the directory name twice.

And I have already explained why `git reset --hard` makes more sense in my opinion.

I agree that Git can be hard to wrap your head around, and that the commands could be more intuitive. But Git is complex in large part because the underlying data structure can be tricky to reason about -- not because the UI on top of it is terrible.

git is a tool. Different tools take different amounts of time to master. People should probably spend some time formally learning git just as one would formally learn a programming language.