[cookiecaper]

Yeah, git is really not a mature or well-designed VCS. The fact that you can trivially lose the supposed permanent reference -- and that it's encouraged as part of several common workflows at that -- should be more than enough to demonstrate this. If you care about history, use a VCS like Fossil.

[inimino]

What is encouraged by Github is not always exactly the same as what is encouraged by the maintainers of git.

[cerved]

the SHA is permanent, you're responsible for backup