Meh, I've used it numerous times in situations like setting up some clustered software to explore for the first time. Just fire up your 3 vms, ssh into each of them in their own panes, hotkey to activate broadcast mode, start creating/editing your config(s) and tuning your server.

It really is useful in the right scenarios, sure you shouldn't adopt it as your "official method for provisioning production servers" but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a legitimate use case or is a "crutch".

> Honestly, it sounds like an anti-feature or a crutch.

Every feature to one person can be a crutch to the next. Adding Salt or Chef to anything also increases the attack surface.