You joke, but we both know that automatic lamp timers have existed for decades. I like home automation stuff as much as the next person but this is a disingenuous argument.
With an automatic lamp timer, you lose the ability to (easily) control the lamp manually. Also, what about all of the lights that aren't lamps?
If all you've got are lamps and you're willing to be a slave to the timer, then by all means just use the timer. But once it gets just a little bit more complicated, the timer isn't so great.
I've got an "evening" scene that turns on 10 or so different lights. I will trigger it manually when I'm home and feel it's time, or if my system is in vacation mode it will trigger based on the sunset time. I don't have to worry about accidentally having left a switch off or anything like that. You cannot even begin the replicate this with an automatic lamp timer.
I went from those to a basic HomeAssistant setup, and really enjoy the fact that my light timers can be "30 minutes before sunset" instead of a fixed time that needs to be adjusted throughout the year.
On the other hand, the fact that everything stops working if wifi goes down is a real bummer. I can't for the life of me understand why these "smart" plugs don't just use powerline ethernet. I guess I should just be thankful that their API could be reverse engineered.
You should be using Z-wave instead of Wi-Fi for anything that you can, but in reality how often does your actual Wi-Fi network go down? HA runs locally, so it's not like you need Internet access. Unless your smart plugs are actually controlled over the Internet, in which case you should throw them away immediately and buy something better.
Not sure why another wireless protocol would be any better -- isn't powerline ethernet the obviously best choice for something that has to be plugged in to work, anyway?
powerline is sadly terrible when it comes to radio interference (which isn't surprising: it just dumps HF on power cables, and power cables go in long-ish straight lines - you got nice antennas). Regulation against that is just barely enforced.
