[CodeMage]

I'm not defending such comments, but there's more to them than just gatekeeping. Speaking from my own point of view, the "I was a geek and it wasn't cool" sentiment comes from feeling betrayed by having your lifestyle become an industry that too often focuses on profit more than on quality; the "I know CS from the ground up" comes from frustration with all the people who dismiss learning from the ground up without understanding all the insights it gives you; and "nobody deserves to have an easy path to being a coder" is an exaggeration of "when you try to make learning easier than it can really be, you end up dumbing things down".

Recently I found myself struggling to formulate my attitude towards software development and the best I could come up with is "lifestyle coding": sure, it's important to me to make something people will use and like, something that will improve life in some aspect, but in the end, I'm in this because I love to create programs. To me programming is more than my job, more than just means to an end, it's what I truly enjoy. People like me will often feel bitter about many aspects of our industry and it takes a conscious effort to keep aware of that feeling and to make sure it doesn't taint our decisions.