I'm not so sure i would agree. There is definitely a learning curve starting out, once that looks far steeper than it really is. I am probably still be considered beginner, or maybe slightly more advanced. I also started with Smart Things, and switched when they dropped support for Windows phone and started the transition to the new app. I have been on Hubitat for about 3 or 4 years now. I can definitely say that Hubitat has lead me to try and do far more than I was ever inclined to do with ST. There I was pretty much of the mind set of set it and forget it. With Hubitat feel more of an urge to tinker, figure out new ways i can use automation , or improve what I already have.
Well you say you too started with SmartThings. Can you be sure you would not have found Hubitat's complexity and power a bit daunting had you not? So many different menus it takes a long time just to remember where you saw what! I am like that with Blender, dread opening it. If there had been a Blender Beginners Mode with far fewer options visible I might have been happily using the advanced features by now instead of giving up on meshing.
I started with wi-fi smart plugs then graduated to an Alexa/Zigbee hub when I wanted to add smart lighting into our home.
I also wanted to move away from wi-fi smart devices as much as possible.
While the 4th generation Echo with built-in Zigbee hub did work for most of my devices, Alexa routines are not reliable.
Mine would just stop working at random.
That's when I looked around for better options and to get an idea from the various communities about the products and their issues.
That's what pushed me towards Hubitat.
I only have one RM 5 routine at the moment and it works/doesn't work.
The doesn't work part of that statement comes from me assuming something worked the way I expected it to vs how it actually works.
As a long time software developer, I didn't read the documentation 
As a long time hardware developer usually I am not reading docs either.
Furthermore, if I cannot do simple tasks intuitively I am immediately ruling
out this SW/HW products. But I am OK to read docs for whatever features
which are not obvious.
As a EE FPGA designer I am using VHDL/Verilog (these are Hardware
Description languages). Both projects initially came from DOD requirements
to eliminate extra layers of documentation. I.e. the VHDL/Verilog design
must be self explanatory. And it is self explanatory if it is done right.
Returning back to Hubitat.
Visualized RM Rule is very intuitive and self explanatory (at least to my eyes).
However GUI for creating rules is not intuitive at all.
When I started to create Rules in RM I new exactly what I was looking for.
But it took me a while to realize all GUI is a dynamic pages and you are not seeing
the entire picture right away.
One improovent to the RM GUI will be the ability to see all available options but
whatever cannot be selected should be grayed instead of being invisible.
I am not sure if this is possible to implement on current Hubitat platform.
And if this is possible what efort it will/may take.
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I hesitate to say this for the retribution that may come...but many will invest the time to start climbing the learning curve of a lot of things as long as they know it will lead to building on itself, and resulting in implementations that won't require, or tempt, endless reworking as the platform/tools evolve every 6 months.
It has been said many times that "you can always keep using what you built" but nobody likes being left behind as significant improvements are made. There is enough mentioned in this forum of the likes of *being stranded" in an old version of RM (because folk don't have the time & energy to port to the latest version) that I bet there are a lot of folk who look long and hard for a HE supported path to do as much as possible without going the roll-your-own route.
Call that beginner, novice, or perhaps... just dis-interest to get knee deep in this.
While it is totally satisfying to configure home/facility monitoring and automation, not everyone wants to make a hobby of maintaining solutions to keep them in sync with the evolving platform. Yet they don't like being left behind either.
Yes, there is a point where it becomes necessary to roll up your sleeves....back in the day I can remember major re-writes of systems. But those usually happened after YEARS of evolution of the platform they were resident on; and they were for systems that actually made money and paid for themselves.
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Every userās needs will be different. I have setup some HA at both my father and my motherās homes.
At my fatherās place, I setup a few devices and related rules, and only need to touch it again if he wants to add a device. This occurs maybe once a year. The rules are written in whatever engin was available then and never get touched again. New rules are typically written in the new engins, but thatās really not a necessity - just my personal preference.
At my motherās place, the bits of automation have been setup and never touched again. She is happy and all is good.
At my place, it is a totally different story. I enjoy tinkering with my setup to add this and that improvement, updating to the latest version of hardware at times, keeping old stuff at other. It depends on how frequently I need to use it, and on whether or not my current/future needs are met.
That said, I donāt feel the need to rewrite rules that work in the latest rule engines. Iāll use the new engines for new rules, but those that work well stay in the technology they were written in. If I have time that I feel like spending on my HA and I want to update a few things, I do. The beauty of Hubitat is that I donāt need to. I can keep the same old platform if I want to, generally donāt need to update code or rules. Works great for my purposes!
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This is my personal approach as well. I don't generally have time to go rework things that work just fine as is. Most rules I create these days are for development and testing purposes. Every once in a while I will revisit an old rule and redo it. I'd guess that on average the automations in use in my house are 3 years old.
Some people have a compulsion about updating old automations to new rules, and then complain about the "need" to do that. I don't find that a very compelling criticism of the platform and how we evolve it.
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And my golden rule is : Don't touch and fix whatever is not broken".
Works very well for me and saves a lot of time.
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I'm a bit of a categorizer and have found myself using the different rules apps to separate rules that are for different types of purposes. 
I am very well organized/categorized.
Unfortunately Hubitat as is today does not offer any kind of folder structure for rules.
But for years I am/was using very structural naming convention for designing electronics.
To begin with - every name is prefixed.
So, I am using the same approach for naming everything in Hubitat (devices, variables,
rules, etc.).
Here is a short example for my rule names:
I wouldn't be happy categorising by room other than plugs and bulbs etc. For example the pills reminder I'd want to categorise under health or reminders. I have a lot of intruder detection rules that are not really associated with rooms anyway. So I prefaced them with s_ but kept forgetting what it meant haha.
Yes, I 100% agree with you.
But currently there is no way to create nice top level hierarchy.
That would be good cos some of my rules are just supporting rules to the main one
I think so, With smart things I did 99% of what I did solely through the app. While I had very minimal exposure to the IDE, When I did get into it, I was typically very lost and confused. In that sense I think Hubitat is somewhat easier to "ease into". While there is certainly a learning curve, I think Hubitat has a way of drawing you in and the curve felt a bit more natural and intuitive.
I can't argue with this, though again in a fairly short time I seemed to just "know" where to go. Again I think Hubitat tends to be more intuitive, especially once you learn and understand some basic terms and ideas like driver (vs "device handlers" in ST),
Now, with all of that having been said the one area when I still have issues in Hubitat is in Rule Manager. Sure I can get most of the basic rules I want to do done without too much effort, but if they start to get mildly complex I start getting lost in the weeds and find myself doing a lot of trial and error. It is that same trial and error that usually leads me to some other new adventure! Rule Manager has been steadily improving since I first came to the platform,
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I have never set out to rewrite rules when a new version came out unless it was because I had a rule that wasn't working the way I wanted to begin with, As a result over the years I have had a more natural progression to update most if not all of my rules at one point or another. The last major rewrite was last summer when we moved and some devices were left in the old place, some were moved to different rooms or replaced all together. In any case the old rules didn't work in the new house and needed to be re-done. Some were redone out side of Rule Manager in simple lighting etc, because they just didn't necessitate the the complexities of rule manager. In the near future there will be another revision as I am working on generally cleaning up and streamlining my system. I have a set up with multiple hubs, one for devices, one for rules, apps, etc. During a recent transition wound up having some rules on the devices hub. Now most of those are paused and the other hub is controlling the automation. Additionally in the next year or so I expect to expand my system, which itself will drive new rules as well as some rewrites.
Yep, that was me for a long time. If it wasn't built in or official I didn't have any interest in it. As things progress , I'm finding I'm looking into more options (both in terms of devices as well as apps, etc.). It's hard form me to wrap my mind around how one could just have a set it and forget it mind set with this, I've tried that, but it seems like I just keep thinking of new ways I could make it work, but that's probably just me.
All good points. On these last couple I'd say that it depends on what it is. Some things you want to just do the simple job you set out to accomplish, other cases keep nudging that desire to improve no doubt. But I find as my trust builds (that it all will work flawlessly when no one is around for weeks at a time)...I step back and just enjoy that I don't have to worry.
I guess where I want to "tinker" is less in the software and more in the hardware, e.g. continuing to build on the topology of what's monitored & controlled in a fairly simple manner (refer back to the trust concern). By the way, that's actually my biggest fear... hardware failure (or battery decline) that I don't see coming.
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Perhaps I'm not typical in my approaches to Home Automation.
I never saw the need to move to Node Red for HA. Perhaps it was more sexy, more visual, easier to understand - but it was also another piece of hardware which I didn't want to use (I use a companion RPI anyway, as it turned out, but that's another story).
Just around the same time that many people here made a rush to Node Red, Hubitat came out with Simple Automation Rules, and then subsequently with Basic Rules. (Maybe I've got the chronology wrong).
Strangely enough, I found the SAR and BR could handle approximately 90%-95% of the HA that I was doing. Furthermore, they were straight forward enough that I could easily explain those rules to my family (and clients). They were easy to explain. Whenever I had to use RM, I said "Because of technical limitations, I had to use the hocus pocus technique - Rule Machine!"
Yes, you can do anything in Rule Machine. Yes, it's very flexible and it works. Yes, sometimes it's difficult to explain, and sometimes the UI is difficult to work with. So what? I only use it maybe 5%-10% of the time. Maybe I'm just not complicated enough?
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Just ran across this....thought I'd throw this guy's post in here for more perspective.
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@PunchCardPgmr thanks for including a portion of my perspective. I feel like I am a freshman playing JV and just got promoted to be the last substitute on the Varsity team (knowing of course it would take a Black Swan event to actually get me out onto the field). I have some thoughts on this particular thread but I want to think about them some more before I post them ... there are some cringe worthy passages that I'd like to explain why I found cringe worthy and some comments that I think deserve highlighting as I tend to share similar thoughts...
Or not... maybe I'd be belaboring well covered ground. idk
