It mostly boils down to configurability for themes. While you are comfortable editing template files not everyone is. So looking at the template hierarchy you can see the following:
When there is a front-page.php template it kind of ignores any setting in “Settings → Reading”. (It still loads different content, but the template is forced)
But if you want to leave the choice of how the front page should behave/look to the user you can instead have a home.php which is only used if the user chooses to display posts on the front page. If he chooses to display a page this is respected as well.
I think if you look at the template hierarchy things will clear up.
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