{{< youtube https://youtu.be/0VROde_vh6U >}}

▶ Watch this video on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

You know the commands. commit, branch, merge. You type them, things mostly work, and the diagrams in your Git tool still look like a subway map drawn by a raccoon.

Here's the usual explanation people reach for: a branch is a container. A box that holds your commits. It feels right, so nobody questions it.

It's also the thing quietly making everything confusing.

A branch isn't a box. It's a pointer — a sticky note with a name on it, slapped onto one specific commit. And the commits themselves? They're a linked list, where each one points backward to its parent. Newer points to older. Nothing points forward.

That's the whole trick. Once you stop thinking containers and start thinking pointers, branch diagrams stop being mysterious and start being readable. A merge is just two lines that diverged and then rejoined at a commit with two parents.

It's always the same three things underneath. The video walks through building one up step by step — and it sets up the merge-vs-rebase conversation that's coming in Part 2.