Yes? Having checkout handle creating branches is strictly a shortcut. The other option for the shortcut would be for `git branch` to sometimes alter state in y

Yes? Having checkout handle creating branches is strictly a shortcut. The other option for the shortcut would be for `git branch` to sometimes alter state in your working directory (it currently never does this). The non-shortcut version (which works today) is to only create branches with `git branch` and only checkout branches with `git checkout`. If you look at it from the perspective of "checkout is the thing that screws with your local working directory", it is organized logically.