There aparently is only one "wife" and we all share her. 
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i keep dreaming of that.. but sharing everyones wife.. lol
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I spent my first few weeks trying out Apps. The next few weeks, I got rid of half of them. I vacillate between being attracted to an interesting concept (shiny object!) and then pragmatically solving my real problems. Today, webCoRE is my personal must-have app. Next month, who knows?
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So true! 
Shiny sparkly things really are distracting... 
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Did you find Note-RED faster than the built-in motion lighting app for triggering motion lighting automation?
For most motion lighting, I’ve seen no discernible difference and I prefer the built-in HE apps as I find them quicker and more intuitive to configure and debug than NR. Others have reported speed differences though. Eg here and here.
Where I’ve seen big differences personally is with activating scenes with lots of devices. Eg in my home office, I control my lighting with 6 scenes that change the level and color temperature of 11 different bulbs based on motion, illuminance and whether I’m on a video call. HE’s scene activator takes 3-6 seconds to change all the lights, which is painfully slow, whereas the same scenes activated in Node RED via HE’s Maker API are, I’d estimate, 3-4x faster.
I also use NR to create complex motion lighting rules that would require multiple cascading rules in HE.
TL:DR is that I recommend using the built-in HE apps like motion lighting ahead of NR to prototype and build the majority of automations, but have NR in your back pocket for when you run into the occasional use case where HE’s latency is unacceptably high or the built-in apps can’t handle the logic elegantly.
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I'd recommend Hub Rebooter to keep the hub running smooth and sort out any issues automatically. Its a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing that helps with the occasional hiccup or slowdown. I use mine on daily reboot mode at 4 AM (full reboot, not reboot process). I'd recommend this config for most people.
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Is RM really that resource intensive? Sure, I could search 5 minutes for an app and spend 5 minutes configuring it, or I could spend 5 minutes making a rule in RM (which im familiar with), even if it is a little less efficient.
I wouldn’t worry about it. If you like Rule Machine, just use it 
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I agree with @marktheknife - I wouldn't worry about it. Do consider using the "lite" versions of RM for the simple stuff though. No need to use extra resources if you can help it.
If you start getting fancy and incorporating a lot of different things especially cloud related stuff and/or lots of community apps/drivers then it's possible that you might start seeing some performance related issues but usually the system can handle it.
The other things to watch out for are hub power issues (get a power backup if you can) which can kill the hub or a bad/failing device messing up the mesh.
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it's the most intensive of the apps, but if it's just a simple rule, it's not terrible
not really.. other apps that update every device at once or things like android dashboard etc if you select all devices can be much more intensive.. it really depends on what apps you are using.. A blanket statement that rule machine is the most intensive is just not true.
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I understand that power failures can break the mesh for a period of time (and some devices may have to be re-paired), and I understand that in rare cases, the flash can get corrupted in the hub and prevent booting, but how can a power outage permanent kill a device? I don’t want to invest in a power backup right now since I would rather spend the money on smartifying more parts of my house. Power outages are also very rare here so I don’t think it’s a great investment.
The radios in the devices like any electronics are very susceptible to recurrent power surges. I've had a number of switches where the radios fried but not the switch itself. Ge's are notorious.and they are replacing them for that reason. Ie for me usually on.off.on off on etc. In quick succession fries the radios.
in regards to rule making apps (Simple Automations, Basic Rules, Rule Machine, etc), it is
By adding some sort of power backup the hope is to reduce the chance of problems occurring and extend the life of the hub for as long as possible.
I guess the main worry like you mentioned is data corruption although having the voltage jump around (and not trip a surge protector) will likely stress some of the internal components but I defer to others as I am not experienced in that kind of thing.
I did have a bad power supply take out a C-4 hub once so I know electrical issues can harm the hub but a UPS would not have helped in that situation.
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I already have a surge protector, so the voltage isn’t an issue. Does the Hubitat have journaling in it’s file system (making it easier to recover from forced shutdown)?
I cannot answer technical details beyond knowing that they are using Linux and JVM from prior discussions with the staff. I would expect whatever fs is used would be very lightweight so probably not journalled.
AFAIK corruption can occur in the db holding device and other information for HE. With Z-Wave the "real" device association table is stored in the Radio Chipset and I'm not sure how corruptable that is. It is also my understanding that the Zigbee info is stored on the hub so might be more vulnerable. The good news is the soft-reset procedure can usually bring things back if you have good backups.
Note: I am not an employee of Hubitat Inc. so these details are subject to further clarification and or correction.
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Thanks for the info. I have a nightly backup to google drive. A couple of times, I would wake up and the hub would have a blue led, and the web server would not show anything. Using soft reset via diagnostic, I got it back up and running in 10 min. I wonder if these events had something to do with power.
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It's possible or overheating maybe.
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