Oh, please... quit worrying about some silly labels and adjectives. You are, as far as I'm concerned, a "programmer" if you write programs. How old you are, whether or not you get paid, what kind of credentials you have, etc. are totally irrelevant.

Now if he qualified that as "I was a professional programmer at six" then I could see some (small) cause to say "Hey, wait a minute." But to get this up in arms over somebody saying they are / were a programmer? What's the point?