Git cli UX made be not great, but the git datastructure of representing commits, branches, trees and blobs as immutable pointers and merkle trees is a phenomenal invention.

I don't agree with every command needs to hit some REST api. That seems like throwing the baby away with bathwater.

The most powerful thing about git is that I can work fully offline with a partial clone. And sync the commits when I get online.

Git got popular because of it's distributed nature.

I remember when our svn server used to hang and the entire team was blocked from even making a commit.