" There are a lot of great things about Git, but one feature that can cause issues is the fact that a git clone downloads the entire history of the project, including every version of every file"
That isn’t exactly true. We currently have a rather mismanaged, monolithic repository across multiple teams, that’s about 4gb, and downloaded via a very creeky VPN, from an even creakier server.
One of the things those in the know do is set a shallow clone - with say --depth 1 (or 10). You can then ‘deepen’ the git clone at leisure, and not download as much in a single time.
This cuts down the download to ~200mb, about… 10mb of which I actually need.