I have been out of touch for a bit, and am getting back into all this.
As I was browsing around, looking for info for a current project, I noticed some comments here and there that made mention of the IDE going away.
What’s up with that?
Is it really going away?
If so, when…and WHY?
When it goes away, will we be given some other tool/s that we can use to do the same stuff we’ve been doing in there all these years?
Yes, because Groovy is going away. Last date I heard was by the end of 2021. There is supposed to be a replacement by then that offers similar functionality (minus Groovy coding obviously).
We will get some tools, but smartthings has made it clear that they do not intend to continue hosting other people’s custom code in their cloud forever. They consider it to be a large source of the instability over the last couple of years.
We don’t yet know how they are going to handle hub connected devices, like zigbee and zwave. But for everything else, you can do pretty much whatever you want to, but you will connect to smartthings through the published API And you will host your own code to do so. Or you will be able to use the new rules API, which is a lot like webcore and much more advanced than what is in the basic app features.
Official announcement:
OK, cool.
So…not time to panic and run around screaming quite yet, eh? lol
Taking into consideration development time, I think you can stay fresh for a few more years again 
I definitely wouldn’t count on that. 
Samsung has shown throughout this process that they are happy to discontinue things before an adequate replacement is available, sometimes on what seems a fairly arbitrary calendar date. We were told many times that the Classic app wouldn’t be discontinued “until there was parity,” but it didn’t work out that way. 
Since they’ve said the IDE will be going away sometime this year, that’s what I would expect.
Submitted with respect.
Yes, you’re right, but I would hope that this time act in a different way than in the past, otherwise it means that they don’t deserve my attention.
I am optimistic, I hope not to become disillusioned.
there is talk that if and when they do pull the IDE that only smartthings devices will be natively supported. that is w/o some kind of user-supported server to handle the 3rd party device code.
I haven’t heard that, and if it were true, they would probably lose their Z wave hub certification. Every certified Z wave hub has to be able to issue basic commands to any certified Z wave end device, regardless of manufacturer. That’s sort of the whole point of zwave.
“Basic” has a very specific meaning in this context, it’s essentially on/off/dim for switches and accept an event report for sensors, but the hub Has to do that much or it’s not a certified Z wave hub.
The requirements for zigbee are a little more complicated because compatibility is at the profile level: they could wave their hands and say they have a proprietary zigbee profile and then they’d be OK with not supporting any other brand devices.
But for Z wave I think they have to at least provide what are now the generic stock DTHs.
hmmmm i thought ST was getting out of the hardware business 
yes, the next couple of months are going to get very interesting
I’ve been seeing for a while there is a new Webcore coming. Do we know what the state of development is or where to find it? Haven’t seen much on this since the 2019 SDC presentation
There’s quite a bit on it now. It’s still in development, so there are more features yet to be added.
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And it has its own subcategory in the forum now:
We should probably clarify between the Rules API and Webcore. The Rules API has made a lot of strides lately and is now the backend of Automations in the app. There’s also an ongoing beta for it running locally. BUT there has been no indication that Webcore has started any work to adapt it to the new APIs, whether that’s the Rules API or as an endpoint app using the SmartThings API.
Are you sure about that? Ady already showed us a working example of WebCoRE running locally on the SmartThings hub using Rules API, and in those 2 years since, I’m pretty confident, as @ady624 is the father of WebCoRE and an extremely clever developer, he’s got to 80% parity, if not more.
That was a proof of concept for Samsung Developer Conference. Adrian no longer works on webcore since he works for SmartThings. The latest discussion on them making a new version is in their forum
SmartThings might build their own web based GUI for the Rules API, but I wouldn’t expect it to do everything that Webcore can
Since Adrian was hired by SmartThings specifically for his efforts on WebCoRE, and the WebCoRE version he exhibited running locally on the SmartThings hub using the Rules API was created whilst he was an employee of SmartThings, I would say demonstrates that you don’t know as much about what’s going on at SmartThings as you portend to do.
ok buddy, think what you will.
I’m a little nervous asking this question but if I don’t I will never understand.
I am very much a novice and have only been playing with Webcore for the past year. I finally started to get a good understanding of it and have been able to build some pretty complex pistons. I’ve been reading up on the new rules API and it is quit intimidating. If I understand correctly, this will be where you build more complex rules (like in Webcore)?
Is this something a novice (that’s me) should try right now? Or wait until it’s released? Any tips, tricks or input for learning is very much appreciated!
Edit: I don’t know where to put this so I’m tacking on here. I emailed support a question that had something to do with the SmartLighting app. I received an email back very strongly stating that Smart apps and the IDE are not going away and asked where I had gotten that information. I referred them to this forum and told them to Google it. They had no idea.
Bad questions are the unasked ones…
Yes, and?
It’s more like HTML vs. NotePad and (insert your favorite HTML IDE here)
In this case, Rules API is the base language - the method for communicating your hopes and dreams to the SmartThings API in a way that it can interpret and do…
Just as in the Groovy environment where you can use the IDE to upload a text file, you can actually use Notepad to create a Rule in the SmartThings Rules API if you understand the protocols / syntax at that level and use PostMan to send it. I think Graham has it down to that level - I can read it, but I’m still very bad at writing it - I have trouble thinking in JSON files.
SmartThings staff (someone please find the link I think it was Blake) said that they know this is a limitation to adoption and there’s a Rule Builder in development. <<< THIS would be your direct analog to WebCoRE and also where any updated version of WebCoRE would likely live if it becomes a reality in the future.
So
That really depends to what level you want to learn the system mechanics? I suspect we wont be able to do some of the really neat tricks without using Rules API directly But It depends on how rich the upcoming builder will be. That’s an unknown - so until that’s not, I’m reading and understanding the Rules API so I can understand what it can (currently) do. I will probably try portin gsome of my simpler pistons all while hoping this alluded to rule builder becomes reality soon so I can make a determination on how to break up my current webcore environment. (so read: you’re not alone with your uncertainty.)