[Larrikin]

As a programmer you should look into Home Assistant and the self hosted community in general. You can achieve a lot and don't have to shut yourself out of legitimate technological improvements that are limited by some other company's cloud.

[TeMPOraL]

Increasingly, a lot of those "legitimate technological improvements" are completely destroying interoperability. Google, in particular, has been making a lot of such annoying moves in the past couple years, on Android, GSuite, WearOS, and now Photos.

[anonomousename]

Legitamate technological improvements include thread, which allows local control of devices with no cloud servers involved, which lets you use home assistant or an equivalent

[Carrok]

Yea, I have plenty of home automation, all of which operates just fine without any external internet connection whatsoever. You just have to do a little research on what to buy.