I agree with the premise of not being gratuitously nasty. But I wish he hadn't made it sound like all programming is as consequence-free as skateboarding.
If you're programming as a hobby, it doesn't affect anyone but yourself. I totally support your using Arduinos until you figure out you can build one yourself in 5 minutes on a breadboard.
If you're programming professionally, the rules change. It's not all about supporting your personal learning experience. If you use simple hashing instead of bcrypt, and you have real users, you are potentially hurting people. It is literally true that if you don't know better than that, you should not programming a computer (well, programming an authentication system, anyway).
So yeah, don't be nasty. But also don't think your self-esteem is more important than doing a good job.
Nobody is saying "don't do a good job" or even "accept sub-standard work". They're saying act more like a mentor than a critic. Mentors don't tear their pupils down, because you can't teach in that environment. Help people become better; don't stroke your ego at others' expense.
If you're programming as a hobby, it doesn't affect anyone but yourself. I totally support your using Arduinos until you figure out you can build one yourself in 5 minutes on a breadboard.
If you're programming professionally, the rules change. It's not all about supporting your personal learning experience. If you use simple hashing instead of bcrypt, and you have real users, you are potentially hurting people. It is literally true that if you don't know better than that, you should not programming a computer (well, programming an authentication system, anyway).
So yeah, don't be nasty. But also don't think your self-esteem is more important than doing a good job.