Actually I don't find it arrogant at all. I currently just use PD from the audio side of things, but at my day job I'm a lead artist at a video game company, and you have actually hit on one of my biggest gripes about Photoshop, and the whole dumbing down of a product for the sake of readability/usability.
Photoshop (since version 3) introduced the idea of blend modes for its layers. Yet for some insane reason they decided to go against the most common naming schemes for these modes. So instead of 'Adding' one layer (CS + CD) I need to figure out if I should use 'screen' or 'overlay' or some other oddly named thing from their list (its screen by the way :). This has led to all types of confusion for artists, who started out as your 'dumb user' but over the years have moved into the power user category. So now They look at the various blend operations available to them on modern cards and have to run through them all testing each to see what its 'Photoshop' equivalent is. In many cases Photoshop's approach is easier (multiply is easier, I guess, to understand than CS*CD) in the short term, aimed at people who are just looking to add text to their digital images. But in the long term 'dumbing' things down can hurt the long term user who wishes to expand their knowledge.
m.
maybe some users have earned a deeper (or a first) understanding of signal- processing because of the way pd works. They learned how effects are made (vs. applied). I want the same for Gem-users. I fear users asking for features like "sharpening" when it is already there. And they will go and ask for "sharpening more" (is called like this in photoshop ?). And i am not willing to spend my time for these. (but of course, that is quite arrogant)