Most developers use about 20% of Git's power. These 5 commands are the other 80%. Master them and you'll solve problems in seconds that others spend hours on.
1. Interactive Rebase — Clean Commit History
Never push a messy branch again. Interactive rebase lets you squash, reorder, and edit commits before anyone sees them.
git rebase -i HEAD~4
This opens an editor with your last 4 commits. Change pick to squash to combine commits, or reword to fix a message. Your PR reviewer will thank you.
2. Git Bisect — Find the Bug in O(log n)
A bug was introduced sometime in the last 100 commits. Instead of checking them one by one, let Git binary-search for you:
git bisect start
git bisect bad HEAD # current state is broken
git bisect good v1.0.0 # last known good state
Git checks out a commit in the middle. Test it, mark it git bisect good or git bisect bad. In 7 steps, you'll find the exact commit among 100. Then git bisect reset to return.
3. Worktrees — Work on Two Branches Simultaneously
Need to switch branches but don't want to stash your changes? Worktrees let you check out multiple branches into separate directories — all from one repo.
git worktree add ../feature-branch feature-branch
Now you have two working directories: your current one and ../feature-branch. Make changes in either, they share the same .git folder. Perfect for hotfixes while deep in a feature.
4. Reflog — Your Undo Safety Net
Accidentally deleted a branch? Force-pushed the wrong thing? git reflog shows every action Git has taken in the last 90 days:
git reflog
# abc1234 HEAD@{0}: commit: fix login bug
# def5678 HEAD@{1}: reset: moving to HEAD~3
# ghi9012 HEAD@{2}: commit: add payment feature
Find the commit you lost and do git checkout ghi9012 to recover it. The reflog has saved more careers than any StackOverflow answer.
5. Partial Staging — Commit Specific Lines
You made 5 changes in one file but only want to commit 2 of them. Don't copy-paste into a new file. Use interactive staging:
git add -p
Git shows each chunk and asks what to do. Press y to stage it, n to skip, or s to split a large chunk into smaller ones. Commit exactly what you mean to commit.
Bottom Line
Start with git add -p and git reflog — you'll use those weekly. Then add rebase -i for your next PR. Bisect and worktrees are your secret weapons for the tough debugging sessions.
Senior developers don't memorize more commands. They know fewer commands that solve problems faster.
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