Im in firmware. IDEs change often depending on the chip i am working with. In some cases, the tools are better on windows, or have been in the past. It has gotten alot better recently.

I dont mind windows personally(from a usability standpoint, the spyware aspect worries me). And WSL has not caused me any issues in my dev environment.

This isnt a windows issue, its a company policy issue. If developers dont have full admin rights on their systems, its a failure of managment. If you cant trust your developers enough to give them admin rights, thats not a co worker i want to be around.

This sounds more like IT babysitting.

If IT cant trust software engineers to have full admin rights on a work computer, either the calibur of your co workers is so bad that no one should want to work there, or the IT department has such a god complex, no one should want to work there.

WSL has worked fine for me for the past 4 years.

Im also confused. Do these people not have some sort of version control and backups? Even if the AI did it, no one has backups? Did the ai also delete the backups and repos? If the building burnt down, would they be in the same situation, it just wouldnt make it to the news?