I'd say running something on boot tends to be similar for beginners with or without systemd. The support for drop-in configs, however, makes it easy to revert screw-ups without much effort. In addition, the fact that one does not have to write any bash to change the way a service is started is a godsend. Ini-files aren't perfect, I get that, but from the point of view of a beginner they're both easier to grok and modify as compared to bash scripts.
