You were able to do those hacks because it was open to you at run time. You COULD fix it. Now if it breaks and there's no fix, you may as well have used boxed software because your options are only to wait for a fix or find something else. Honestly, I'd have very little problem with systemd if it was not written in a compiled language. Losing that flexibility sucks.

In another comment I noted that this is obviously a divide between the hobbyists and the 9-5 linux users. I am both, so this is particularly sucky.