I work in both too and will take Xcode any day of the week over AS. It has plenty of downsides but it's fast and surfaces errors well. YMMV.
And yeah, if you let a project lapse on gradle and library updates for any length of time at all be prepared for a fight to get it all brought back up to speed. Swift Package Manager is generally less of a headache.
Some of AS’ “smart” features are also more of a hindrance than a help at times, and don’t even get me started on ProGuard (which has no Apple ecosystem equivalent).