> That doesn't excuse Git having an unintuitive UI that makes it very difficult to learn. It has that in common Vim, Emacs, the command line itself... and programming in general. What they also have in common is that once you get used to them they're wonderful tools

I can't agree with that. Emacs, UNIX CLI etc are indeed powerful tools with a steep learning curve but they are wonderful once learned.

Git? Not so much. Git is not any better than mercurial (to OP: I recommend mercurial) but git is extremely user hostile to an extreme I can't think of any other popular tool ever.

Over the decades I've probably used every well-known source control system (and a handful less famous ones) and git is the only one where if I need to do anything out of the ordinary I will always backup the whole tree first because it's 50/50 odds git will go into some inexplicable and unrecoverable state and the code is lost. I've never had that happen with any other source control tool. Kinda defeats the point of source control.

I do agree with everyone saying git is a plague we must face so do learn it. I suggest doing so at work where they pay you to do unfun things, that's why they call it a job.

For personal/pleasure project I want to enjoy quality tools that are well designed, pleasant to use and don't fight against me - so I use mercurial.