I started in mid-2013 too, and my position is similar to yours. I'd characterise it like this: lexical lifetimes are easier to grok, but NLL turns out to be mor

I started in mid-2013 too, and my position is similar to yours. I'd characterise it like this: lexical lifetimes are easier to grok, but NLL turns out to be more practical, doing what people actually want (where LL didn't) enough that it overcomes the greater conceptual complexity, because you have to actually think about the concepts less often.