There was a brief time when aptitude was smarter than apt-get (it was smart enough to remove auto-installed dependencies when you removed a package, for example

There was a brief time when aptitude was smarter than apt-get (it was smart enough to remove auto-installed dependencies when you removed a package, for example). During that time, the advice was to use aptitude instead of apt-get. Those smarts were later moved to apt itself, but it's still a part of the folklore.