I just don’t like when other people patronize designed fortress or something you experience, when really they couldn’t do 1/10th of the stuff they say given vanilla.
(Tell them about how your doctor is doing something silly)
Criticizer- “Why is that guy whose given personality is your doctor...I would never etc”
(Can only do because therapist)
(Early necromancer siege)
Criticizer- “You lost your fort in an early siege? Your fort should be done by now”
(Can only do because fast dwarves)
DFhack fastdwarf is truly a cheat/hack (wouldn't call it a 'mod' for pedantic reasons).
Dwarf Therapist doesn't let you do anything you couldn't normally do, it just makes it so you don't have to spend an hour going through dwarf profiles making notes about them and deciphering their stats and skills from their description. And I have done that in vanilla. Once it took two hours to go through a twenty dwarf migrant wave.
I think the real issue is that your friends are one-upping jerks. Sharing anecdotes is supposed to be for mutual interest and camaraderie. It's not about bragging about "achievements" or showing off your "l33t dorf skillz." Efficiency and competence are nice and all, but they aren't virtues to be slavishly pursued. Interesting stories are born of conflict, i.e. when things go wrong. No one wants to hear a story about a time when everything went perfectly and there were no problems and all challenges were defeated easily or bypassed.
Also, Dwarf Fortress is not a competitive game. If someone is gloating about their accomplishments or 'skill' (rather than just sharing it as an interesting story) they are completely missing the point of the game. This isn't Simcity or Farmville. You don't get online dick-hat points for spending hours grinding out a really high fortress value.
On another note, the RAW files are there and mod-able because a core part of the game is personalizing your own experience. As a single-player game it's not "cheating" to edit them, especially because their is no "winning" in the game. Exploring what can be done with the game and trying to learn and break its internal systems is a game all on its own.