[beermonster]

Reading this[1] and getting the data structures/mental model correctly internalised in my head.

Although I do use git from the cli (or magit) primarily, this knowledge has helped me pick-up front end tools intuitively and have helped others when I've never used their preferred tool. All of this doesn't seem possible unless you've put in the effort learning what's going on behind the scenes. That is to say, git itself it neither user friendly nor intuitive it must be learned.

Knowing mercurial (hg) beforehand did slow my learning progress a bit with all the false-friends. You may find it easier to learn if you don't have to re-learn some naming.

[1] https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

[hnews_account_1]

This is my answer too. The main git book is very well written. I stopped reading just before it got into rebasing and had to pick that up from the internet due to work requirements, but the book was so solid in explaining the basics that I understood outside stuff almost immediately.

I think one thing that’ll help OP, is to learn everything on the command line. The fine grain control is worth the extra effort. I’ve hated almost all git GUIs in most IDEs because they won’t let me do weird things like grafting branches which is a very advanced concept for them but once you understand git, it is a very simple operation.