It's absolutely possible to be mistaken about this. The placebo effect is very strong. I'm sure there are countless things in my own workflow that feel like a huge boon to me while being a wash at best in reality. The classic keyboard vs. mouse study comes to mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657135

This is why it's so important to have data. So far I have not seen any evidence of a 'Cambrian explosion' or 'industrial revolution' in software.