Buffers are truly amazing - combined with powerful buffer naming patterns, it's a breeze switching between buffers blindly (included with autocomplete) and if you forget about which buffers are open it's a keystroke away to see an overview of the buffers open...
When you have 100 or more buffers open, you may have two files with the same name. Using uniquify (require 'uniquify) helps differentiate them. Instead of getting file<1> and file<2> you get file:"directory_1" and file:"directory_2".
20-25 buffers open at once? Easy!