@datarama I suppose where I worry the most is this:

I just did a really cool programming thing. I'm proud of it. It was difficult for me but in the end I pulled it off, so I decide to show the work off.

"dude my agent could have done that in 3 seconds, shut up"

@acidiclight I've had that exact interaction on a few occasions (both with code and with pixel art), and it is quite upsetting. I don't really know how to counter it properly.

But, weirdly enough, I think I used to know, back when I was a little kid. There's a story in the family legendarium that my mother likes to tell about me - she used to take me along to early home computer trade shows (she did a bit of moonlighting writing for a computer mag), and I got to see the very first Macintosh in Denmark. So little 5-year-old me walks over to the exciting computer, fires up the paint program and starts drawing a bicycle!

The Apple salescritter saw the obvious marketing pitch opportunity and seized it - "so easy even a little kid can use it!". And when he was done impressing the spectators, he came over to me and told me that if I used the circle tool rather than freehand, I could get perfectly circular wheels.

"I know that", I said, "but then it wouldn't be *my* bike."

A very childish response! But now, I think 5-year-old me was a lot wiser, in his own way, than 46-year-old me is.