The AI coding assistant landscape is saturated with tools that promise to revolutionize development workflows. As an engineer who has worked with complex systems for decades, I approach such claims with healthy skepticism. After extensively testing the major players (Cursor, WindSurf, GitHub Copilot, and others), I've found Cline - a free VSCode plugin - to be uniquely valuable for serious engineering work. Here's why, along with important caveats and trade-offs to consider.Cline approaches AI a...