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So if someone creates a new file and integrate the content of the old file to reach the same folder state than yours, you think s/he does something different?

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Yes? Editing a file is different from creating a new file with some code copied from somewhere else, obviously. They may reach the same end state, but that doesn't make them the same operation.

It also happens that one is much, much more common in software development than the other, so it's a much better mental model of what SEs do.

> They may reach the same end state, but that doesn't make them the same operation.

So you're clinging to your mental model. Thanks for proving my point.

This is how work is actually done, and my mental model matches how I and my colleagues and yours as well actually work.

I could contort my mental model to make it match how Git works, but it is a contortion that some tool imposes on me.

We work in computing, I would expect everyone's mental models to be computational, not equational - different algorithms with the same result are still different. QuickSort is not the same as Merge sort just because they have the same inputs and outputs.

The issue is that the path you used to go from A to B is yours, one could use a totally different path. But what really matters is that your product is now in state B. That's what you ship, not the path.

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