I'm a sysadmin who writes tools. I like it because it gives me plenty ideas
for nontrivial tools for which I am in the audience (so I write for myself),
I'm not getting bored with tweaking the same application over and over again
(I switch between writing many different things), and because I'm not
nominally expected to program, so I'm not tied that much to whatever
language is popular in the company (nobody thinks about my tools that we'll
need to update and develop them for years to come, and thus I can choose
whatever language I deem appropriate).