We all learn Git the hard way. You start with add , commit , push — and that works until the day you accidentally commit to main or delete a branch you meant to keep. Here are 10 Git commands I discovered way later than I should have. Each one saved me from a real mess. 1. git switch — The Safe Checkout I used git checkout for everything: switching branches, restoring files, creating new branches. Until one day I ran: git checkout some-file.txt expecting to switch to a branch, and instead wiped