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> Need to change something, put in a a request to IT who might get around to it in a week if you are lucky.

If the change happens at all. The IT department might say "we don't have the time to do that," or "other users depend on the app being like this so we can't change it to be like that," or even "why do you need that, your justification isn't good enough."

Excel is the non-programmer or non-admin equivalent of "I'll just bang that out in [php | python | perl | powershell]." We've all done it, we will all continue to do it, and yes it will look like an absolute mess...that probably winds up powering a Fortune 50 company.




Moreover, in most non-software companies, IT has covered their asses by prohibiting users from accessing programming tools.

I get that most of us live in a land of "Of course I have an IDE and compilers / REPL" at work.

You know what IDE and compiler IT can't take away? And the last option that's always available at any company?

Excel.


Ah but most secretly have Powershell which is super powerful.


I've contracted in places where cmd is blocked, but Powershell is not. The mind boggles.

(For those cursed to work in Windows enterprise land, most of what is being talked about here is that Powershell is essentially .Net, e.g. '$DateTime = New-Object System.DateTime -ArgumentList 2015, 10, 10')

https://mcpmag.com/articles/2015/11/04/net-members-in-powers...


My IT department contacted me because their "security" software alerted them that I ran a Powershell command.


And .NET compilers actually, living on C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\


I have the experience of having worked in UNIX shops where $HOME was mounted noexec, everyone got development rights over access groups and we only got to use official IT tools.

Many are spoiled by having their own devenv nowadays.

Ironically cloud computing is going back to those days, where the cloud IDE and shell only allows for IT validated tools.




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