BTW, you will also find that there’s a lot of argument between those who believe that IOT should serve “home automation” purposes, where the system runs everything proactively based on preset parameters and the person doesn’t even realize that different routines are being run. And those who prefer “home control” where the purpose of IOT is to remove the need to physically interact with the devices, but where the person initiates what should happen when.
It’s not that one of these is better than the other (although you’ll find people who will be happy to argue about that) – – rather it’s that old saying “your use case is not my use case.”
Someone who lives by themselves and has fairly regular habits may be thrilled with the idea of a multilayered system that does everything on its own.
Someone who lives in a housemate situation with a lot of relative strangers to come and go and extremely variable schedules may just want not to have to get up off the couch if they want to change the lights. 
Both are perfectly reasonable approaches, it’s just that different things work for different people.
It’s always fun to read about what other people have done, which is why I like looking at the project reports, but if there were “one straight road to heaven” it would come pre-built into any Home automation system that you bought. Instead, one of the things that people tend to value most about smartthings is that it lets them Tailor the type of automation/Control provided to their own needs.
One perfect example is a long running discussion we had in the thread about A bathroom light control smartapp that one community member had developed for himself and then shared. As a medically fragile person, one of my concerns is that if I pass out in the bathroom, I don’t want to come to in the dark. 
But mine is a very different use case than most of the people who would like the light to turn off after just a few minutes of apparent vacancy.
So “my use case is not your use case.” But I think everyone learned a great deal from the discussion. 