We chose to adopt this philosophy some time ago at WooThemes. It's been a mammoth task given our extensive catalog of themes but we're now really starting to bear the fruit of this transition.

It can be a tough sell though. From the consumers perspective the ThemeForest theme with 5000 features represents better face value - despite the drawbacks that to us as developers are all too apparent.

I just wanted to say major kudos to any ThemeForest authors who are bucking that trend. It's also great to see articles like this posted on wptavern. Openly discussing this topic can only help more folks understand the benefits of building themes more sensibly.

My only emerging concern is the lack of unity with regards to the plugins authors choose to integrate with. Separating functionality into plugins is great, but saturating the plugin space with 20-30 plugins which all essentially do the same thing does seem a waste of resources.