I think that rather than viewing it as condescending and pretentious it may help you to use the following analogy: "If you were to start hacking on the Glasgow

I think that rather than viewing it as condescending and pretentious it may help you to use the following analogy: "If you were to start hacking on the Glasgow Haskell Compiler's internals it will be a profound experience but I must warn you, if you are not fortunate enough to be surrounded by highly experienced older people who have been working with the codebase for many years and have offered to assist you, then you are going to have a very bad time."