The main thing that people fail to understand is that commits are immutable and the overall commit graph is immutable (with the caveat that pathways in the grap

The main thing that people fail to understand is that commits are immutable and the overall commit graph is immutable (with the caveat that pathways in the graph that don't end in a branch head are subject to garbage collection). A rebase does not destroy information. It creates new commits and moves the branch head to a different spot on the graph. The reason git is seen as painful is because you can't claim expertise until you develop the ability to form a mental map of the graph. But once you do this the lights turn on and everything starts to make sense. This is why the mantra "commit early and often" still holds. The more experienced git user will tell the newer people this, so when they come with a mess it will always be recoverable.