Surely, it isn't a leap to imagine that someone who was bullied a lot as a child would have a difficult time constructively receiving criticism? I believe most people are not great at constructively giving it, so it doesn't seem like that should be a stretch at all.

I think you're right, however in general, one _ought_ to mature out of that phase and be able to separate the two.

Most things that ought to occur do not.

This isn't a reason to refrain from (or worse, prohibit) commonly acceptable and valuable behavior just because a certain minority's state of mind might not be receptive to it (either through actual past trauma or just malicious intent to instigate drama).

I agree and I'd add that most of us aren't good at giving constructive feedback either, so it can be a double-edged sword (if I used that idiom correctly).

Not that this is a case of this, but in tech communities I see too many examples of "criticism" where in the critic doesn't want to actually provide anything useful to the person and instead uses the opportunity to show themselves and/or the other people involved how smart they are.

When I read that first part, I thought, yup, could have been me right here, even if that weren't your point. I think sometimes I reply online for many different reasons, typically emotional ones. I'll read something and I'll feel excited/confused/angry/annoyed/etc. about that topic or something related and will share it, often not being so aware of why I commented or how it was a mostly non-sequitur comment.

This part of human life fascinates me, where one person may assume the other posted something to show how smart they were, but the person who posted actually did so because they had an aha moment in their head and felt so excited to share it. The differing, sometimes even opposite, perspective on the person's intention.

Agreed. Criticism (of the kind we're discussing here) is attacking ideas. Bullying is attacking people. The former is an essential part of any healthy intellectual environment. The latter is not.

I'm not sure the OP was conflating the two so much as acknowledging that he may be particularly sensitive in this area due to past experiences.

I paused on that as well and took OP to be relating bullying to NumFOCUS' criticism of the article author; rather than simply saying that all criticism is bullying.

Perhaps a bit too generous but you're right, the statement didn't make alot of sense without that moderating context. I certainly would see what NumFOCUS did here as bullying.