As a counter-anecdote, the staging area/cache/index is one of the main reasons I use git. When they were first released Mercurial was my initial choice. It was

As a counter-anecdote, the staging area/cache/index is one of the main reasons I use git. When they were first released Mercurial was my initial choice. It was certainly more friendly to a beginner. But I quickly moved to using git and the staging area/cache/index you mention was one of the main reasons.