I'm giving jj a try but one aspect of it I dislike is edits to files are automatically committed, so you need to defensively create empty new commits for your changes. As in, want to browse the repo from a commit 2 weeks ago? Well if you just checkout that commit and then edit a file, you've automatically changed that commit in your repo and rebased everything after it on top of your new changes. So instead you creat…
How are you "checking out" the old commit? It sounds like you're using `jj edit`, which I'd argue does what it says on the tin. Switch to using `jj new ` and your problem goes away.
So if the last thing I did on was finish some work by making a new commit, then writing some changes, and then giving it a commit message with `jj desc`, then I am now polluting that commit with the unrelated explanatory psuedo-code. So when switching to a repo I'm not actively working in, I need to defensively remember to check the current `jj status` before typing in any files to make sure I am on an empty commit. With git, I can jump around repos and make explanatory edits willy-nilly, confident that my changes are distinct from real meaningful commits.
I guess one way to describe it is: we want to make it easy to make good commits and hard to make bad commits. jj seems to be prioritizing the former to the detriment of the latter. My personality prioritizes rigorous safety / lack of surprises.