> I super-agree on this point. I even switched to using this macro, just
> to prevent customize from writing stuff to my .emacs (which normally is
> a one-liner):
>
> (defmacro csetq (variable value)
>   `(funcall (or (get ',variable 'custom-set) 'set-default) ',variable
,value))
> (csetq tool-bar-mode nil)
> (csetq menu-bar-mode nil)
> ...
>
> It works out pretty well, basically Customize isn't aware that I've
> modified anything. So when something does get saved (I think recently
> package.el saved something like a list of installed packages), I see
> only that one thing, instead of a horrible blob of 100 variables. That's
> a lot more manageable.

I'm not aware of any situation where a plain setq would cause customize to
save something to your init file. Could you give an example where that
macro helped you?