I had to teach git to 10 non-developer (for small configuration code, and configuration files) used to SVN. The stagging area wasn't really a problem to learn.

I had to teach git to 10 non-developer (for small configuration code, and configuration files) used to SVN. The stagging area wasn't really a problem to learn. Most of the problem they had came from stashing: "I want to pull but git doesn't want to !" Or changes following you when switching branches: "I worked in developed, now I'm back to master and I have all this files modified!" Which could lead to a "reset --hard" for getting rid of those changes, which was generally regretted after that! Also I had a few detached head states due to simple double-click on a commit name in the UI that resulted in a checkout, when they just wanted to see the commit log. Finally a lot of confusion arised from using SourceTree that shows you a window with ten options every time you try to pull. (SourceTree wasn't my choice) So I think gitless does provide an improvement by getting rid of the stash, but I don't really see the point of removing the staging area.