I don't think he was trying to be insulting. From what I gather, he was trying to justify the negativity theme in the comments for this post, which was the subject of the original comment. I agree that the blog post was not detailed enough, and didn't talk enough about HOW you became a programmer in 12 weeks.

What kind of information do you mean? I programmed, asked questions, programmed, read source code, and programmed. There's zero magic. I learned in the same way all human beings learn.

We're knowledge workers. I gained enough programming knowledge to be a programmer. Where's the confusion?

Being a programmer myself, this is a bit theoretical but I think if I wasn't and I sat down to read an article names "How I became a Programmer", I would expect a couple of pointers to where to start, what to do and how to do it.

Besides from the point about learning a language rather than a framework, your post mostly says "It took me 12 week to learn programming" and that the way to do it is the obvious: read stuff, try stuff etc.

There is nothing wrong with this of course, but given the headline, especially here on HN, I can see why some might feel that they didn't quite get their money's worth.

Judging by the huge volume of emails and comments on the blog, retweets and all that good stuff the article generated, I feel pretty good about the article

Where's the content?

Did you read the article?

Try separating yourself from the content for a moment and you'll see he isn't insulting you, but finding holes in your work.

One thing you'll notice here is that the community is very blunt, and often comes across as rude, but as a new hacker myself I've grown to appreciate the honesty.

Buddy I was a Marine for over ten years and spent years in combat zones. There is a difference between bluntness/honesty and disrespect/rudeness, and I am well acquainted with what that line looks like.

And I was an Army Soldier in Afghanistan. That has nothing to do with any of this. It's clear your feathers are easily ruffled. I'd work on that.

"it's essentially a puff piece" Sounds pretty insulting to me.