> With svn you really do not want to do this since in my experience you can only work at one thing at a time per checked out directory. Instead you have to write it down or try to remember.
I used that all the time when coding with svn, and while not as handy has git stash it is workable.
But what I was specifically referring to is the -p flags of various git commands (stash, reset, add, checkout, ...) so you can interactively only stash away what you wish instead of the entire working directory (or an entire subdirectory of it).
When using git in that way, I spend more time mucking around with cherry picking than I would to just treat things atomically.
The tools are more powerful, but they're also correspondingly more complex, and the net value is in my experience negative.
People simply feel more productive as the number of knobs they're turning increases. However, SCM is the least important knob in my day-to-day development. What matters to me is turning around quick changes with associated unit tests and ultimately committing code that works the first time. The less I think about SCM knobs, the sooner I can move on to the next piece of actual work.