> I thought it was a weird, over-engineered solution to a non-existent problem.

To be fair, its a cookie-cutter approach that resonates with people unfamiliar with git but not ready/willing to invest the time to understand it deeply. That is understandable; a lot of people come from other systems and just need to get going right away and gits poor reputation for command-line consistency etc. is well-earned.

(To be clear, I am not a fan of git flow.)

If anyone is interested in truly understanding git, start here: http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf