please notice that alt coin creators are not developers. they are 'cloners'
its much the same as calling a script kiddie, an elite hacker.
just because they are provided with a script and they maybe tweak 1% of it, doesnt make them talented
I agree with this sentiment overall. However, please note that the Litecoin and Peercoin/Primecoin core devs are in fact quite skilled*. All of them are far better developers than I am, and I'm not a bad developer. Also, at least one of the Litecoin devs participates actively in Bitcoin development (Warren Togami, who is also the founder of Fedora and creator of Spamassassin).
*There may be other skilled alt coin devs, these are just the ones I'm familiar with.