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[Dareon Clearwater]

I use it mostly because it really helps with my normal playstyle: Every single dwarf has the quality-irrelevant jobs activated.  Usually that's Mason (For walls, workshops are either producing blocks or restricted by skill levels), Butcher, Tanner, Wood Burner, Potash Maker, Lye Maker, Miller, Thresher, Milker, Shearer, Spinner, Presser, Fish Cleaner, Furnace Operator, and Strand Extractor.  For glass forts, add Glassmaker and Architect.  Occasionally, add Mechanic, Engraver, Brewer, Cook, or Weaver to an immigration wave.  You can see how that would get annoying to set manually every immigration wave.

[nenjin]

I don't really do duty assignment through DT anymore. But for getting a quick visual display of what your dorfs are about, it can't be beat.

[Kalalification]

I use DT as it was intended, as a tool, not an interface.

What's wrong with using it as an interface?

[Flaming Toadstool]

When I first started playing Dwarf Fortress, I didn't even know about Dwarf Therapist, so I made due without it. But once I found out about it, my Dwarf Fortress experience went from "Content" to "Ecstatic", if I may use that metaphor. I could probably play without it, but I prefer to play with it.

[Fedor]

I like the OP's positive message, but I'm another very grateful DT user, as I frankly don't think much of the native labor interfaces.

The DF labor interface without add-ons is terribly claustrophic; you're not able to see much pertinent information when making decisions, you have to dig around to get to the screen that lets you tell the game what you want, and you have to type way too much to do small, repetitive things.

I get the most fun out of DF when my fort has a lot of dwarves, the majority of whom have unique skills and labors, working in a large variety of industries to add beauty, value, and coolness to the common endeavor.  DT lets me get personal with my dwarves, lets me train them to be the best they can be, keep them gainfully employed, and then build mighty forts without taking all year (my time) to do it.

Most DF players whose posts I've read don't do this.  They tend to run hordes of semi-skilled peons tasked to a bunch of tasks (like all of masonry, mechanics, mining, AND engraving) that are then tasked in succession.  Or let dwarves stand idle when not needed, which is probably the reason they lose track of dwarves trapped behind constructed walls or floodgates until the miasma cloud appears.  In the native DF interface, it's hard to make room for individualized dwarf preferences and neat attributes, because it's so much trouble to give individual dwarves opportunities to strut their stuff.

[warwizard]

  I'm one of the fellows that assigns all labors to every dwarf as they come in, and I only start messing with a dwar's labor assignments only when I have a dire need like the broker is busy planting instead of going to the trade depot. I may load up DT only 2-3 times in the life of a fort, and that's usually just to catch the 5 immigrants that I missed assigning labors to out of the wave of 40. I've never lost a fort due to losing some critical specialist and forgetting to enable the labor on her replacement. 4 to 5 years in the dwarves that like to farm are really good at it, the lazy bastards that don't like to work are still at low skills, and I have a smattering of legandry whatevers from the moods, and then I start giving the legandaries their private workshops right in their bedrooms. It may not be efficient, but things do get done in a timely manner when there are 10 wood cutters and 30 miners out of 42 dwarves.

[Itnetlolor]

I use DT as it was intended, as a tool, not an interface.

What's wrong with using it as an interface?

Dependency on it. I pretty much want to use it in the manner of "set it and forget it" when it comes to long-running menial tasks; and only switch it out if it starts intervening with any other tasks that come up that I would either need to relocate the worker unions or hire the specialists to do the finer works that would end up nerfed if just "assembly-lined" just to get it over with. Projects where this would be most relevant would be royal quarters, epic dining halls/drinking zones, and fine hallways.

[Luckymoose]

DT is for the weak! Play it like real men!

[Sutremaine]

I use DT as it was intended, as a tool, not an interface.

What's wrong with using it as an interface?

Dependency on it. I pretty much want to use it in the manner of "set it and forget it" when it comes to long-running menial tasks; and only switch it out if it starts intervening with any other tasks that come up

If you wanted to switch between having many unskilled workers and having few skilled workers (for example, Project A generating thirty Mechanics jobs across thirty pressure plates vs. Project B generating thirty Mechanics jobs across three pressure plates), what would be the difference between using DT as an interface and using it as a tool?