I agree that in many cases this meticulous approach is overkill. But what it demonstrates nicely is, as the man says, 'Git means never having to say "If only I'

I agree that in many cases this meticulous approach is overkill. But what it demonstrates nicely is, as the man says, 'Git means never having to say "If only I'd realized sooner."' When you do need your commit history to be as neat as possible, git gives you plenty of tools to make it happen. Imagine the nightmare a task like this would be with Subversion. (I haven't used Hg a lot so can't say how it compares in this regard--I'd be curious to know.)