I don't want everything in my home to be connected to the internet even though the possibility of controlling everything remotely sounds intriguing. Working on the software industry and having a good understanding of the state of security I definitely don't want to expose anything not absolutely necessary to the internet.
Yet I don't want to give up on all those quality of life improvements the modern technology can offer. Actually, not having connected devices requires the automation to be on a much higher level. Besides, the devices can be smart on their own without needing to be connected. Of course there is also options for local connections without exposing the devices to the public internet.
Building the home automation from these elementary blocks feels a lot like low level coding. On principal level you just have a few logical elements, the building blocks for anything more complex.
Simple elements also enforces simple design. Which in turn is less error prone than anything that tries to be in any way smart. And that's really important in the case of home automation. Everything needs to "just work".