I've been through this myself, being told "You're not a real developer" earlier in my career. At that time I was very junior and doing essentially maintenance

I've been through this myself, being told "You're not a real developer" earlier in my career. At that time I was very junior and doing essentially maintenance (bug fixes and adding new features) to a C++ cross-platform client/server application. But for myself it boils down to this standard: Can I write programs to accomplish my own goals? And the answer to that is yes. I might use an older technology or an older stack but I can certainly get done what I need to get done. Labels aside, when I need a program to accomplish a goal, in any programming language, I can do it.