But it's more than just cool tech demos. You could add features to Windows itself, with first-class integrations that looked and felt as if it was shipped by Microsoft. You could automate things that didn't have an automation interface, and you could extend software that couldn't otherwise or didn't want to be extended. Your computer was truly yours.
Sure letting it be a free-for-all was a bad idea. I'm fine with granular permissions, but am wary because it means I'm relying on features that upstream could turn off because they felt like it, or it made them look bad, or it introduces a security hole they just don't want to fix.
I guess you do lose something as a windows user but this kind of hack was always pretty crappy and has a much better alternative. As a linux user I am used to everything having both a gui, cli and often language libraries. Writing a script for cli commands is much much nicer than hacking some gui. And much less likely to break.
I grew up delving through the Windows labyrinth. Now I am comfortable at a command line and can write a mean bash script, but initially I abhorred it :)
