Like so many discussions on here, they polarise into the two camps of the lovers of brain power and mental agility and the lovers of all things green and magenta. I am an Airbus pilot and I make it my business to find out every little nuance of how the FMGC works and what little tricks are out there to make the system do all the different things I could want at different stages of flight. That seems to me just common sense and professionalism, and I have no time whatsoever for the whining ex-Boeing pilots who are completely lost over stuff they should have picked up long ago and who just say the Airbus is rubbish. This tiny handful of negative aviators usually make a great play of 'airmanship' to cover up their professional inadequacies. It is totally unacceptable to me for a pilot to be on any aircraft for a reasonable period of time and just to be sat there having no idea what advanced functions exist and making no effort to find out.
There is, however, a strong case for ensuring that pilots do not lose the core skills of mental agility, common sense, genuine airmanship and the handling skills so important to safe flight. That again is not to speak against the more modern jets which do so much. It is to say that a professional pilot needs a range of skills that can be called upon in whatever circumstance he finds himself in. Complacency is a dangerous thing - whether over-reliance on computers or an inability to use the aircraft to its maximum potential through sheer ignorance. The truth rarely lies at the extremes of the argument - that is certainly the case here.