Great post. But why is there a biographic blurb about being a developer at Microsoft at 18 at the end? Isn't this exactly the kind of "in your face, I did cooler things at 18 than you ever will" kind of thing that you are arguing against?

On another note, I think one of the problems in the community is that criticism is directed at people, not their code. We forget that people can and do learn and get better. For an example, read the comments about people who fail the FizzBuzz test, or those who code in PHP.