I thought it was enormously better because it helped you not to cut yourself with all the dangerous things in a way that git didn't. It also had an excellent GUI (thg).
It was a much less stressful tool to use and git hasn't really got much better since then - I've just converted a repo to git and the team using it have had about 4 unpleasant mistakes in the last week as they adapt.
As for speed.....I cannot say I ever noticed any problem. Waiting around for the version control system has never been an issue for me.......except a git repo with 70,000 commits and we worked out how to merge a lot of those to fix the problem.
I upvoted because even though I prefer Mercurial I do like tools that are powerful and flexible.
The problem for me is that VCSes have a mental model and the way they actually work is more complicated than that. I haven't tried to deeply understand Git and in a way I slightly resent needing to - even Mercurial has the same problem in some areas but there it's more about a feature I want and the oddly contorted way they achieve it (specifically bookmarks) and it's not a situation where I get into danger and don't know how to get out.
Branches are great. I don't want to know that they're "just a pointer". :-D I'm so dull that I never use the "staging" concept because it's just a huge opportunity for making mistakes (for me). I really want something simple to reason about where I can add little complexities if I need them.
To take the bad Mercurial example - I don't really need permanent branches and I definitely don't need some new concept with oddly different commands to give me impermanence. Let me delete a branch!
Can any of the downvoters comment on this? My experience with Git is pretty much the same, but maybe Hg also allows you to unfuck a screwed up repo, just as Git does?
The bad states Git "allows you to unfuck" are largely caused by Git's awful UX (confusing and multipurpose commands based on inner workings), so Git gets no credit for "solving" a problem it caused.
It was a much less stressful tool to use and git hasn't really got much better since then - I've just converted a repo to git and the team using it have had about 4 unpleasant mistakes in the last week as they adapt.
As for speed.....I cannot say I ever noticed any problem. Waiting around for the version control system has never been an issue for me.......except a git repo with 70,000 commits and we worked out how to merge a lot of those to fix the problem.