After the git lecture, I had a student ask about the difference between git checkout and git switch.

Git checkout is a powerful command. As per the slides, it allows you to do two things:

1. Restore a file from a different branch or commit: git checkout my-branchname my_file.txt
2. Switch to a different branch or commit: git checkout my-branchname

You can even add the -b flag in the second case to create a branch before you switch to it!

Packing two quite different functions into a single command is confusing. Thus, git restore and git switch have been created to split up the functionality of git checkout.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57265785/whats-the-difference-between-git-switch-and-git-checkout-branch