Actually, counting lines, whether empty, comment, or otherwise, very much is the way to make the point. The reality of actual service units that people write is not anything like the picture that was being painted. You erroneously think that the point is that short is good and long is bad, rather than what it actually is, which is learn the subject and don't make facile arguments based upon rubbish numbers plucked from thin air. Actually looking at reality and counting, rather than pulling the number 7 from a hat, is part of that point.

I recommend reading the design of the Mewburn rc system, http://jdebp.eu./FGA/run-scripts-and-service-units-side-by-s... , and some of the entries in the systemd House of Horror. This whole "It's just writing 7 lines and it's easy!" argument falls apart when one looks at the reality of short service units that are either grossly wrong or turn out to be underpinned by the very things that their lengths are being compared to (which also means that it is still those rc scripts that are being used and maintained by software authors -- from 1997 in the example of apachectl), real world service units that are not short, other systems of long standing that are equally concise, and -- yes -- the reality that people include commentary for maintainability.

One of the amusing things about this argument that is of particular relevance to the Devuan release is that back when Devuan was announced someone put up a "fork Fedora" WWW page criticizing the Devuan people, with a systemd service unit side by side with a van Smoorenburg rc script. It is sad to note that few people observed that the systemd unit described just one service, whereas the van Smoorenburg rc script ran two. Since you are on the subject of commentary, I invite you to observe which of the twain included comments and which did not, as well, and determine what point the "fork Fedora" people were in fact demonstrating. (-: