I think even for new people the systemd configs are much more complex (and the APIs are certainly much more complex) than the libc ones which worked well (often

I think even for new people the systemd configs are much more complex (and the APIs are certainly much more complex) than the libc ones which worked well (often better.) The problem is that almost nothing in Systemd shares theory with the rest of the OS. It's entirely its own island of new ideas, commands, and configuration language that you have to learn and memorize.