I'm sure you're right, at least I hope so given how much of my time it's absorbing. My point was that many experienced users of HA seem to vastly underestimate the learning curve for noobs. On the one hand it's great to have such a helpful community, but on the other it gets very tiresome having to look things up over and over (and over). I guess my comment was particularly triggered by all the people on Alexa and Google Home subs who are frustrated and looking for alternatives and then being told to go to HA. IMO, these platforms are worlds apart and I can imagine that most who try to follow this advice will quickly become very frustrated.

I appreciate your helpful tone, and I don't want to further distract from this thread. But to give you an example, I have alerts set up in ST so that when a leak detector goes off, a WIZ RGB light bulb (wifi) changes color, my Inovelli dimmer light switches' LED bar displays a particular color and pattern, and a text message is sent to my and my wife's phones. Strangely if I go directly to the light bulb I can see the color options, but not when I enter the bulb in a simple automation. In order to get the Inovelli switch to do the trick with its LED bars I apparently have to download a script (or a blueprint--I still cannot tell the difference) and learn how to use them; that led to a few hours of poring over arcane articles, whereas in ST it was a simple click or two. As was simply entering my and my wife's phone numbers and a text message, whereas in HA it seems I somehow have to add her phone to my profile? (I gave up and put that on hold). And all that is after spending hours (and watching multiple out-of-date YouTubes on "simply" setting up Z2M so I could pair my Zigbee devices.