Your application code should not be dealing with PID files, log redirection or other low-level concerns.

Let your operating system handle daemons, respawning and logging while you focus on your application features and users.

This makes developing a modern daemon much easier. The init config file is what you use to configure logging, run as a user, and many other things you previous did in code. You tweak a few init config settings; your code focuses less on housekeeping and more on functionality.

Less system administration, easier debugging, simpler code, all because you leveraged the init system to do the work for you!