This. Git integration is the major differentiating feature of gist from all other pastebins.
While a lot heavier but also good, GitLab CE/ EE have "snippets", basically gists, that are backed by git repositories. Same UI as GitHub gists, same comment/ visibility/ share system.
I've used gists since the beginning and didn't even realise you could treat it like a git repo.
There are plenty of other systems to do this with. Gist's value proposition seems orthogonal to its Git integration—more to do with its UX.
no, but once API tokens are implemented (probably this week) you'll be able to write up scripts that can do similar. I definitely plan to have a VSCode extension for sharing files / snippets.