You can think whatever you want about systemd, but sd-boot is quite nice.

Just do a quick pacman -Si for both systemd and Grub. Grub is literally bigger in size, even though just by a little bit. And systemd has an entire bootloader and whatnot bundled with it.

Or just look at Grub's config. It's so clunky that there's literally a config file on your system which is used to make the actual config after running grub-mkconfig. A config file to make the proper config file…

Meanwhile all sd-boot needs to boot are 2 config files which are less than ten lines in total when combined.

I get why people call systemd bloated and such. But Grub isn't perfect either. It's way too complex for what most people need. A simple boot loader to get the system up and running.

Roast me you systemd haters and Devuan, Artix Void etc. elitists.

Systemd is not just one thing, it's a name for a collection of things.

So, yes, some systemd softwares are simple.