"Why git?" series.

Many moons ago a colleague lamented a story to me that went something like this:

SysEngGuy: I asked DeveloperGuy why we should switch to git
Me: Cool, what was his answer?
SysEngGuy: He said it was better, but when I asked him why he just kept saying "because it's better"
Me: But why is it better?
SysEngGuy: Exactly, why would I be compelled to move to something else "just because."

Even if git is super awesome ( which I now know it is ) you can't expect people to switch over unless you sell them on the idea.  Especially when you're dealing with a SysEngGuy that is deeply entrenched in whatever happens to be the "current" way of doing things.

I'm starting a series of posts answering the question of "why is git better?"  My goal here is to both answer the question, and hopefully in doing so, solidify my understanding of git in general.