5 Git Tricks That Make You Look Like a Senior Dev

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 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 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 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 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 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 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 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 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 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 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.