I am not a network engineer but I have quiet a lot of miktrotik devices at home ccr2004/crs326/hapax3/hapac/hex refresh/rb951g/rb260gs etc. and I manage them myself. I also run a opnsense firewall. I am upgrading the network and have made ccr2004 the center for all policy routing of vlans. I have possibly 20 vlans and they have some intricate relationships between them. I tried use address list to group networks and devices and added filtering rules based on the address list.
I used to handle these in opnsense. I am used to wonderful opnsense alias. One can name a single device, network. Embedded these aliases so that alias can become a group. It is very easy to create rules with them. I just enter an alias for a device and then put the device in corresponding group and then apply. The alias interface is intuitive as well. One can later change the name, all are rules are updated without problem. I have groupings of dept three. A device within group within group. I have not tried more, but I bet opnsense can handle it. No problem. Opnsense handles them beautifully. User interface is also intuitive.
Updating address list name in mikrotik name as far as I understand is just pain. There is also no embedding. One have to deal with ip address always. I have to repeat ip address for different groups.
I truely love mikrotik/routeros, one can understand that from the number of devices I own. I advice to everybody. But mikrotik should step up its game and overhaul this address-list. It is just inadequate or outdated in imho.
Mikrotik can and should do better.