Responding "this is entirely untrue" to someone who is saying how something feels to them is not only overly harsh, but entirely inappropriate. You cannot dictate people's feelings. You might think they have misconceptions that are leading to how they feel, but that doesn't make how they feel untrue.
I can understand if you feel frustrated because you don't think this feeling is warranted, but this is not a constructive way to express that, nor fix the problem.
I think there was just enough content in his reply to escape the accusation that he was merely gainsaying (which would be dictating feelings, as opposed to providing information that might dispel them.)
Depending on how you define "big changes". For example, I consider the static reference convenience feature described in the 1.21 release announcement to be a small new feature, but it does affect how people write code (that's kind of the point! :P ).
I can understand if you feel frustrated because you don't think this feeling is warranted, but this is not a constructive way to express that, nor fix the problem.