These forums seem to be pretty friendly most of the times, I don't see a lot of flamers or trolls here, but I guess people are just people... There is always some poison to spit, and if not in the open then it's underneath the surface, hidden on things like sarcasm.
I don't code for a living, I only had 3 curricular units about programming on college and have an interest on the subject. Trying to contribute to FSO and playing around with shaders is something that I thought would be fun to do while learning a bit more about coding. I don't know that much and you won't ever see me acting like a bigshot. I might contribute with something someday IF I ever feel like it, I don't need to prove nothing.