As soneone who has to deal with systems like that at work all the time, I feel that point can't be hammered home enough.

Everytime you read about some sysadmin person that still uses plain old vi because "it's everywhere" or who actually prefers more unreadable syntax in shell scripts because the nice(r) alternative wouldn't be POSIX compliant, it's basically the same effect. Except that on Windows, you're usually screwed, because there's absolutely no useful tool that does the job you want and ships with the OS (as opposed to some no-pixie-dust tool that's been around for decades and has a bit of a steeper learning curve).

Tangentially related, but I've had jobs in the past where I had to build all-too-complex systems in VBA because of the needs of the business and having my environment too restricted.

I realize this isn't ideal...ever...but sometimes the needs of our department--our immediate needs--didn't align with the time require to navigate the massive corporate and IT bureaucracy.

"but sometimes the needs of our department--our immediate needs--didn't align with the time require to navigate the massive corporate and IT bureaucracy."

I battle this every day. Our systems are so locked down for "security" that we in R&D can't do our job without hacking around IT. Thank God they are not very good so there are plenty of loopholes for circumventing the "security" measures.