Android 16 is a mess right now

The author if the "article":

Joe is the Trending Editor for Android Authority, focusing on op-eds, analysis pieces, and hands-on impressions of the latest phones and other gadgets. If it has a screen and a processor, chances are he has something to say about it.
Joe started the industry nearly 13 years ago when he launched a mobile tech-focused YouTube channel called “MobileCupOfJoe.” After running that for a few years throughout high school, he freelanced for PhoneArena, XDA, and 9to5Google. He spent three and a half years as a News Editor and Senior Editor for Android Central and was a Senior Writer and Editor for Screen Rant’s Tech section. He was most recently the Section Editor for Digital Trends’ Mobile section, leading the site’s mobile tech coverage for nearly three years. He’s also a tech trade show veteran, having attended CES, MWC, IFA, and other press briefings and product launches all over the world.
When he’s not writing, you can likely find Joe out running, at the movie theater, or at one of his favorite coffee shops. Joe lives in Michigan with his partner of 10 years, two adorable cats, and a very sweet (and lazy) pit bull/boxer mix.

So basically not the target audience for a developer preview or a canary. Someone who shows through his writing that he doesn't understand software release cycles at all. A click bait finger jockey in other words. Not an authority on anything.

He clearly doesn't understand development.

This should not be here. It's a 121 word tweet, at best. A useless rambling of an excuse of an article.

I dunno. I feel like what this article is about is how Google is perhaps detrimentally changing the developer preview for android and how it might affect the developers who use it to develope their apps. It doesn't necessarily have to be detrimental but if your app works in one developer preview but not in the next or vice versa, it's easier to pinpoint what changes were made between previews when they're tied to a specific developer preview number and you can tell which features have changed or been newly implemented.
- I agree with @Illecors@lemmy.cafe . The whole argument in the article is that unfamiliarity is scary. Despite the fact that all other Google products follow a similar model. Google have made it so that Canary is omnipresent and they can drop in and out features as they want for testing. The article writer is like, but at least the old way, we were sure. Even though there's plenty of times things have come and gone for QPR's and Developer Previews. It's moaning for the sake of moaning and now saying very much. It's actually embarrassing that the author got paid for such an article.

All I want from 17 is that they fix the dark mode schedule. Neither mode works. Both a timed schedule and sunset/sunrise schedules are broken and don't do shit. Been for at least two versions now. COME ON. And this is on their flagship Pixel 9 Pro... So embarrassing, bro.

Don't think this an OS issue per se. Both timed and sunset/sunrise work great on OneUI and Nova Launcher.
- It's been confirmed to be a bug in Android though. There are articles saying Google is aware and the fix is coming in the next update.
  But it's only triggered if you manually toggle dark mode, then the schedule is disengaged. Then you have to manually turn the schedule off and on again, and it works. I just tried today and can confirm.
  But it's very annoying. I toggle it often.

And they even changed more around for developers. A revised structure of the SDK. Demoting Pixel devices from being primary developer platform and now devs should use the emulator... We don't get easy access to device trees for GrapheneOS any more...

Sounds more like a rolling release than a mess to me. Makes sense for development and users that want to try out new features as they get developed.

From a developer's perspective that sounds like a good idea too, no need to rip out features that weren't ready in time and no need to rush a feature because it was in the developer preview therefore it has to ship.