Just wanted to also express that Paul L Ming's post is not only very diplomatic, but quite true as well.

I was going to pop in and ask people why they even bother responding to Why Do I Die's posts anymore, but you handled it quite well.

From the beginning of my desire to get into game development, I wanted to be able to do as much of it myself as possible. I didn't want to re-invent the wheel, of course, but I didn't want my game playing and looking like just any other game. But when someone writes (for example) their own shadows in A7, they aren't re-inventing the wheel. Shadows are done in so many different ways, for so many different purposes.

As an example:
Shadowmapping goes hand-in-hand with good SSS. But if you want to use SSS in Unity, I'm pretty sure you'd have to write your own shadowmapping anyway. And this doesn't exclusively apply to fancy-pants SSS that only the latest computers will run -- such a method could be used for some VERY simple but gorgeous SSS that'll run silky smooth on any computer that can handle shadowmapping.

I know it doesn't suit everyone. But it suits me -- that's the way I like it, and I'd say that's probably how anyone else who knows how to write shaders likes it.

Jibb