Yeah, it’s fairly clever but not actually magical. Sometimes you have to go in and take a look.
Actually, the real magic is that it works out mostly ok most of the time. Much better than older systems where you would have to “check out” a file to work on it which would lock others out. I’ve heard older programmers talk about needing to go find someone who had a file checked out and have them check it back in to enable them to do some work.
Roughly equal parts “git is clever” and “once in a while, someone has to take some time to figure it out”.
Say the code is split into two files. You and I both make changes, but you’re working on file A and I’m in file B. No problem!
Now we both make changes in file A. Sometimes Git can just “figure it out”, like if all your changes are in the beginning of the file, and all my changes are at the end.
But sometimes we both change the same section. Git can’t figure that part out, so one of us has to sit down and reconcile the changes. Sometimes this is pretty simple, other times…not so much.
Put it all together, and it works out pretty well most of the time.
See the cat. Didn’t you look at the comic?