I can certainly relate to this experience. I remember when it was introduced, I was very wary of getting too much 'auto' into the codebase, certainly as the tea

I can certainly relate to this experience. I remember when it was introduced, I was very wary of getting too much 'auto' into the codebase, certainly as the team could be a bit 'gung-ho' adopting stuff just because it was there. However, in hindsight, I think I was being overly conservative, and it worked out well, and adoption didn't cause any obvious problems. Your concerns about learning a new library are valid, but the problem is the library if it's not clear, or well documented. To lay responsibility for this at the door of auto is a stretch. You can write great and terrible code with a number of language features (dubious use of goto is the classic example), and it sounds like you are tackling a library which could do with some love, either in documentation, or to clarify it's conventions.