I just don't understand this mentality. Maybe it's because I haven't had a lot of experience using SVN (without the help of git-svn) in a multi-developer enviro

I just don't understand this mentality. Maybe it's because I haven't had a lot of experience using SVN (without the help of git-svn) in a multi-developer environment. But to me SVN users look like people who have been forced to walk a tightrope -- every time they check code in to their VCS, they have to make sure that the code is free of bugs, or their colleagues' machines blow up. Which is a dangerous situation, so they sensibly erect guardrails, which they then become completely used to, to the point where they don't even feel them - they can follow the path of those guardrails with their eyes closed. They come to assume that the only safe way for a human to walk is in a perfectly straight line. But then a DVCS user comes along, just sort of wandering around in two dimensions. Because DVCS isn't like a tightrope; it's more like a flat parking lot with a line painted on it. You can stroll wherever you like, so long as you're standing on the line when you type git push. But the sight of a git user makes the SVN user freak out: "Watch out! You're going to fall off that level parking lot!" And when someone compares the use of git to C, they are not being profound. They are just freaking out. Because that metaphor is poor. The problem with C is that you can easily write code that contains memory leaks or buffer overflows that are invisible to you, and invisible to your peers, and invisible to your automated tests, but that will cause a severe emergency weeks, months, or years from now. This is a problem that is orders of magnitude more serious than any of these alleged problems with git. git is not secretly introducing long-term time bombs into your code, even if you do manage to find a way to make it break the build.