funny, I also started around 2000 with Linux, so we have the same time under our belt. I remember doing manually dependency resolving downloading packages from freshmeat.net

Let's be honest, I hated that "/etc/init.d/apache2 start" went obsolete, muscle memory and habit are a bitch, but you have to move on sometimes. Otherwise, are you really arguing that some obscure start-stop-daemon wrapper that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, because they were created for suse not redhat were superior?

systemd monitors the daemons, can show you used cpu time, can start daemons depending of if the system is connected to ac or uses battery or if a port got a magic package, it know which resources a service needs and much more, all without needing to manually write scripts. Do we really compare that to some scripts with bullshittery like:

case $1 in
  start):
    start-stop-daemon $service_name
    ;;
  *)
   echo fuck off
   exit 1
   ;;

sorry to be so blunt, and im pretty drunk saying this: sherly you can't be serious, and don't call me sherly.