Well I'm not complaining about systemd's verbosity here, I generally agree on that point. Nor am I saying cron is particularly good, I think there's definitely room for improvement.
What I am saying is that splitting a basic timer between two different files is really bad for readability and understandability.
you are splitting a service and a timer, not all services need a timer. I think that is point being glossed over
services may be called by a target, a timer, or manually. or all 3 when the need arises.
So for example if I have a process that I need to run on startup, every Friday, and sometimes adhoc I can create a single service file and do all 3, and know it is executed in the same way every time
could not do that with cron or even older init systems
What I am saying is that splitting a basic timer between two different files is really bad for readability and understandability.