Scaling. The same diff tool works for text files, latex and other markup files, for any computer language, and so on. I can write downstream tools that take th

Scaling. The same diff tool works for text files, latex and other markup files, for any computer language, and so on. I can write downstream tools that take the output of the diff and do further processing, without worrying about what the output might look like for brainfuck. And how long would we have to wait for Torvalds to add a C++ or Java extension to git? :)