Git rebase is stupid, I’ve seen countless f ups because someone needed the git history to look good
I use it all the time and I really like how I can make garbage commits (wip, test) and then squash them into atomic commits which are easy to review and later on easy to bisect when inevitably mistakes happen. Sure I've fucked up too when I was learning on how to use it and those were some painful mistakes but only through using it and making those mistakes have I learned to use the tool to great advantage (clean history).
When I hear people griping about rebase, I assume that nobody took the time to teach them how to use reflog first. Once I had an understanding of reflog, I could mess up all I wanted (without pushing) and recover. In that environment, rebase can become a very useful tool. Without being able to recover, rebase becomes a tool of confusing irreversible destruction.
The whole purpose of source control is to reliably track code changes so you don't lose anything and can revert to any point or recover from bad merges. Since rebase permits you to violate this core purpose and literally lose the entire history of code changes, then yes, it is stupid.
Getting away from dependence on the ephemeral is why git exists.
No, it's stupid because it's really common for people to fuck it up, and because the purported benefits (clean history) are not something which matters.
You've told me that it doesn't matter to you, but that hasn't changed my mind.
It's not a matter of objective truth, it's a preference.
I would have made this part of a root-level comment but I doubt anyone would read it, but: I think what gets lost in all these git debates is what language/context are we talking about? a shop that churns out javascript and releases to prod every 8 hours is very different than a C++ shop that writes safety-critical software. Their git needs are very different, and having an "I make my bed every day at 5:30am before I go for a 5mi run and come back and drink my juice and eat avocado toast" git regimen may be appropriate for some codebases but not for others where "I woke up hungover at 10am with a partner whose name I cannot remember, in a bed that is not mine" regimen. I think countless human-brain cycles are lost to bickering between these 2 camps.