Honestly, the biggest problem with git is sane environment for merge conflicts and that is out of scope of git CLI. In most cases, imposing rule for small PRs/feature branches will solve it.

git add, git commit, git log, git blame, git push, git rebase -i --onto. That is 95+% of what developers use (maybe an option here or there, like -m or --amend). Merges are done on CI after it passes.

There are a lot of arcane parts and switches. git-send-email is likely used a lot on kernel development, but very rarely in the rest of the world.

> I've got 10 years in it and it still bites me in the ass.

Can you give some examples? I had some problems in the beginnings, but it was because i tried to be "smart".

After I embraced KISS, everything works nicely. As long as I keep "public" branches protected, any splash zone is very small and at worst, just redo it(synergy with small PRs).