What are the practical issues with "cluttered" registry? But also, you can use special apps to track installations and do advanced uninstallations for ~clean uninstalls. Likewise, you could even spend time tracking settings. So yes, still a hassle, but nothing comparable to setting/reinstalling everything from scratch, that's just pure waste
Maybe I shouldn't have said cluttered. More like programs mess with things and don't always put them back. There are a lot of Microsoft support forum posts that had to reinstall Windows to fix weird issues that only started after the install