I've had this feeling before and I've worked with people who express this feeling. My question is, what is the alternative to having this feeling.

You want to show that you are now knowledgable of better methods and you would like the criticizer to recognize that your mistakes are not ones that you are still making. Furthermore, you can't really blame the criticizer, they're just trying to help you become a better programmer.

It seems all you can really do is give the sheepish grin and say "yeah, well, that was written at a very foolish time in my life..."