[xerophtye]

Here's how i see the whole "influences" discussion. What the students did was the same as you looking at a piece of software and asking what design pattern was used? Which algorithm? Which Data Structures? How did you go about building it? Can you show me the Sequence Diagrams, Class Diagrams, ERD? Stuff like that. An amateur/hobbyist who hasn't had professional training would probably not be familiar with all this. He might have written a lot of code and might have done that by reading online tutorials etc etc. He might have written pretty good code too. But A professional would be abashed if none of the above were used at all. And they'd feel their moral duty to inform the person of these things. Is it because the professional is pretentious? Of course not. But all these things exist for a reason, and it's most useful to know about them, and apply them.