Junior to junior. No hype, no doom. Just what a year of actually using these tools taught me.

Where they're great

Boilerplate I've written a hundred times. Syntax in a language I barely know. The "wait, what's that method called again" moments. First drafts of tests. And the best one for me: taking a terrifying stack trace and explaining it back in plain English so I can stop panicking and start reading.

For that stuff they save real time, and I'd fight to keep them.

Where they quietly cost me