I didn't find his tone to be condescending. It struck me as straight talk which will be taken as harsh or condescending, depending on the culture.
I agree with both of you. The difference is in how the two of you are defining "pro", which is nothing more than a marketing term. Define it one way, and you are correct. Define it a different way and he is correct. The way I see it, every tool used by a professional is a professional tool. I also understand that Affinity software is not comparable to Adobe or Corel or Quark, etc. Not everybody understands that. I can find many people who actually believe that Adobe software just has a few more things, and the only reason for the price difference is that Adobe is a big greedy corporation. Of course, Adobe is a big greedy corporation but so is every other company in the business for the purpose of making profit.
Just to let you know: knife tool's origin has nothing to do with Illustrator, but the CTF where such stuff as rules, knife, scissors etc. were main part of the workflow.
When Illustrator was created, the authors tried to make it as close to the CTF that was used as possible, not to reinvent the wheel by creating new terms that might confuse the operators.
