>Having two somewhat non-orthogonal features for branching undoes a part of the easier learning curve argument. You end up having to educate people whether to u

>Having two somewhat non-orthogonal features for branching undoes a part of the easier learning curve argument. You end up having to educate people whether to use bookmarks or branches and in what situations. Like most things, it depends. But mostly no, it doesn't impact the learning curve issue, especially if your team uses the git branching model, you never even have to address Mercurials named branches. I'd also say all the other advantages of Mercurial far out-weigh something a conceptually simple as "use bookmarks for git-like, non-permanent branches; use named branches for permanent branches." Done.