d2k1

With plugins you mean add-ons like Z2M, Mosquitto or VSCode Server, right?

But what can it do more easily than an mid 20th century home can do?

One word: Automations. Everything from lights to irrigation, HVAC to surveillance cameras, fishtanks to plant monitoring, managed by a single, extensible open source platform, hosted locally in your own home.

Of course that is not trivial. If you don't see your smart home as a hobby you enjoy putting time and effort into then the smart home scene is not for you, especially not Home Assistant.

Sounds like you are in a fine place with your home, so you are probably not the target audience here.

I believe it was because it was such a weird and dramatic shift in tone from the regular CAD content, which was not all that great to begin with. You probably had to be there (I wasn't).

Hbomberguy did a video on it that explains it well I think: https://youtu.be/TebCHHCw9rY