Oh, the registry isn't that bad. It's just a hierarchical config file that's very well hidden, requires using either a separate tool (sort of like dconf-editor) or weird tricks like cd'ing into it like it's a directory (thanks Powershell), and that has several versions that get overlaid to give the actual contents you're looking for. Totally normal and sane. /s

WAY more fun is getting file associations working, on corp systems where they fail to persist. I can't double-click a Python script and have it run, despite having the exact same registry settings that I have at home for .py, Python.File, etc.