I don't think that's a good argument. An inexperienced developer can inadvertently do a lot of damage in infinitely many ways, and your example is just one of t

I don't think that's a good argument. An inexperienced developer can inadvertently do a lot of damage in infinitely many ways, and your example is just one of them. I don't think it's a good principle to structure a code base to protect inexperienced coders from themselves, which is always going to be a losing battle. This may have been a missed opportunity for a teachable moment: - The new hire most likely used `git commit -a` without checking `git status` or `git diff`, which is bad practice. - The new hire probably didn't even know about their global .gitignore. IMO a better way to steer new developers in the right direction is simply code review, and I'd think even a pretty cursory review would have caught those .DS_Store files.