It's not my thing. I do think it's pretty poor form to take out APIs without some more advanced warning and heads up to the community than apparently the gnome team provides. Whatever they think they're doing in terms of communicating their roadmap/plans/vision wrt their API, it's certainly not enough based on this sort of feedback.
Removing customization options and features that are not seen to be necessary is an inevitable part of the transition to this philosophy.
GNOME is positioning itself as a more simple, user-friendly desktop environment. Quite frankly, if total customization is your thing, there are plenty of other options available to you.