Some of the complaints resonate with me. In particular, the limited power of systemd's unit file DSL is why I think it's better to allow services to be written using a general purpose programming language. GNU dmd, while still not developed enough to do cool things like socket activation, gives the user the full power of Scheme to configure their system services as they like. I run it as PID 1 on two of my machines, and I also run it as an unprivileged user to manage my gpg agent, emacs daemon, offlineimap, mpd, development web servers, etc. on all of the computers I use, including at work. I think people that aren't happy with systemd, that are also interested in rolling up their sleeves and hacking on an init system, should give dmd some love.

https://gnu.org/s/dmd