How much of this is for a noob like me that just uses vscode? I hardly ever see the git command line, and when I do see it, its trouble beyond what anybody can fix...
However changing the diff algorithm is still a nice one, both for solving conflicts and to avoid the ocassional bad automated merges (the latter is scarier as you don't even know you pushed something wrong).
For instance, I wrote this post last year about how you can use Git as a powerful debugging tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39877637
Graphical diff viewers are way better anyway.
EVERY new employee arrives saying “Hey I’ve found this great UI for git, this one really nails it and makes git easy” and every time it’s a new Git UI that I’ve never heard of. It’s the “hello world” of startups: Creat their great git UI and publish it.
Then they commit with the default crappy commit messages and they don’t know how to git-rebase-i.
Then use the vscode wrapper, or whatever you choose.
People complain that "git" is complicated when what is really happening is that they're looking at a revision management problem like a merge conflict or regression bisection, or having to split/refactor a giant blob of changes as demanded by an upstream project, etc...
Those tasks are complicated, necessarily. And git is a tool for doing them. But people tend to get confused about this and blame the tool and not the problem. But a better UI isn't going to make that split not suck.