> that the school encouraged us to buy them and then completely failed to teach anyone how to use any of the features :'D

This is exactly the kind of thing Seymour Papert warned against; just like handing out tablets and then stopping the students from learning how to unlock them for their own uses defeats the whole point.

I don't think they actively tried to prevent it but I don't think they understood the power it contained. They were amazed when I showed them the in-built functions to solve many of the problems we were apparently learning to solve as well as the programs I wrote myself to automate tedious homework exercises.

I would say that for future hackers putting a calculator/tablet/whatever in one's hands and then trying to limit it's use just adds to the fun.

That's good for finding the natural crypto people who like to break out of such crippleware restrictions, but I can't think of anywhere else in the industry where that is useful selection bias.

Senior sysadmins? SW developers above CRUD level?