I think he meant `git checkout -b ...` since that's what people want to do most of the time. What's the use case for creating a branch if you're not going to use it straight away? (and no 'branch' in the command really)
I always branch before rebasing. Especially when cleaning up history (merging 5-6 "checkpoint" type commits for a big feature into one, etc.) It makes it easy to get back to where you started and you have the original work for reference purposes.
It's not an issue, but it can be an annoyance. Put many of them together and you've got a reason why projects like Ubuntu's 100 papercuts exist. If you have to work with something that just isn't quite right even if it works in the end, it can affect your work.
