alt Hacker News> Working without branches, except for releases, is the most effective way of working, using rebase instead of merge to get a single line of commits.
I think you're confusing workflows with commit history.
You can work with feature branches all you want, rebase them as you feel like it, and then do squash merges to main.
The likes of GitHub even have a button for this.
Why in the world would you do squash merges? ...except to clean up messy mini-branches written by total noobs. I don't do separate commits for funzies. If you want separate commits for ease of review, why not for later reading of the code.
Assumption: above mentioned total noobs don't use git rebase -i or equivalent, everyone else does