I have to strongly disagree with this approach to teaching git. I've been in software engineering for a decade now and have taught many entry level and experienced devs about git. If you start out with trees and other git internal concepts you're just going to lose them.
Have them create a directory, put some files in it, `git init`, add all their files and commit. Have them make some changes, add and commit again. Then ask them how their fellow devs would see their changes. This leads into the distributed nature of git and pushing to remote repos. Continue from there with more practical work and repeat.
I've seen it take devs months of working with git daily to start to understand some of the more advanced concepts so it needs to be practical up front.
If you've seen devs take months of working with git daily to start to understand some of the more advanced concepts, then maybe the problem is the current teaching method. They might learn the more advanced concepts a lot faster if they learn the concepts first.
You're assuming they want to learn. I've seen devs work with svn for years which is conceptually much simpler and they still don't know how branching and merging work, they'll do things like checkout each branch separately and copy files over rather than merge.
Edit - also a favourite interview question for anyone that claims to be familiar with svn is "what does the switch command do", a quick and easy filter to seperate those that know from those that claim to know.
I felt their attitude towards SVN was silly, so I decided I would make my change the right way. But when I went to merge, I got a bizzare error about a 'missing revprop' and it knocked the wind out of my sails.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I ended up copying the files just like everyone else on that project for the brief stint I worked on it. :(
I disagree.The principal behind git is very simple but it can be tricky for people to understand it. Visual representation of a tool,which most of the time is only a handful of command line entries, can be useful.
