Were you not "[being] cute" yourself? I don't like it, but they did have to goad you into giving some substance.
Frankly I think this is faux outrage now that a lot of people are getting wise to the fact a substantial amount of modern programming is basically simple pipefitting.
It was always true that the amount of people providing the foundations the rest of us do work on was super tiny and that was just kind of accepted as fact at least from my > 11 years in industry and overall 20+ years of programming now. It's only now that the pipefitting may be devalued are people getting in a tizzy.