This is my experience as well. Changing the initial decision is a hassle so I just start over most of the time.

> My experience with that is not very good. It gets so hung up in its initial decision. Like, it won't make changes because they're "breaking", for something never even committed.

This hasn't been my experience.

> Or it will litter the code base with defensive code and comments about the path not chosen.

I've definitely seen this, though.