My answer may not be satisfying, as I was never much of an init guru - never bothered much with configuration.

But here are my systemd observations:

- log files now are binary and accessed by `journalctl` - it's a bit less convenient than looking for text files in `/var/log`

- unit files are a miracle. For the 7 or so years before systemd, I wrote one unportable init script, and I hated it. Now I churn them out whenver I feel like it - they are standardized and the docs are incredible.

Apart from that, nothing really changed from my POV, and I use systemd on desktop as well as in small servers.