Unfortunately it works well enough, and there are little or no alternatives to it as far as I can tell. Were there a reasonable alternative, with a configuration as an actual code (YAML isn't), I would dump HA in a heartbeat. I mean I could even live without the GUI - just configuration as a code, and stable support for Zigbee (and BLE etc devices). But then again HA mostly works. And if it works, then...shrug.
My use case is mostly to be able to 1) monitor/understand our electricity consumption, 2) be able to turn off all/selected electrical devices when leaving house etc., 3) automatically lower/raise outside shutters based on weather/where sun is(!) to keep house cooler, 4) and as a bonus, have leak detectors send me a text if there is a leak. My setup is some 30 zigbee smart switches / sockets, couple of IKEA badring leak sensors, solar inverter and something zigbee in main electric panel to get total electric consumption. And five door/window sensors (that aren't really used for anything, but you know how one goes down the rabbit hole with these things...).
How I've made it somewhat manageable is that I run it in a following manner (first in Pi5, now in N100 -- no difference between those observed regarding HA):
- have /opt/homeassistant/config mounted to zram
- on boot unpack /opt/homeassistant/backup/latest.tar.zst -> /opt/homeassistant/config
- run HA from docker (where /opt/homeassistant/config is now on zram)
- cron will make a backup of /opt/homeassistant/config weekly (or I can run backup manually if I've made changes/addedd devices) and then these are backed up 'offsite'.
So now whenever HA goes bonkers, or more likely I've messed something up with it, end result being the same, I simply roll back to some earlier known good configuration. Docker is wonderful in this regard. Really, I don't know how else people live with the HA, other than backing up their entire config, and then re-installing.