Mercurial doesn't require understanding a DAG.

You can get by with `hg next`, `hg prev`, and `hg rebase -s <from> -d <to>` to move entire chains of commits around. Commands with obvious names that allow moving around without understanding chains of dependencies. No weird states where you checkout an old commit but random files from where you just were are left in the directory tree for you to deal with. No difference between `checkout`, `reset --soft`, and `reset --hard` to remember. No detached head states.

And no, `HEAD~1` is not a replacement for `prev`. One is a shortening of "previous", one requires you to remember a magic constant based on knowledge of the DAG.

As for `hg next`, the various responses here should show how clear, obvious, and intuitive the git UI is: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6759791/how-do-i-move-fo...

If I spend a couple hours reading I can understand how git works, but I'm going to forget an hour later because it is so damn complicated with all the different details that my brain flushes it's cache to make room for something with less violently confusing edge cases.