Everyone gets depressed from time to time - it would be somewhat worrisome if certain events didn't cause you do to feel down.

What Alli and myself and others suffer from (all differently, mind you) is a long-term effect. In my case, the effects usually run about 6 months or so and then there's a period where everything is fine, then the long, slow slide back down into the hole.

I've come to accept that this is how it's going to be for me. If I take medication, my brain doesn't function and I can't write software (or much of anything else). While I'm down there, at least there is some hope of being able to accomplish things, albeit not as efficiently.

I say I'm pretty sure I've suffered from bouts of depression because I've been through periods of feeling little but emptiness, sleeping nearly all the time and not wanting to interact with the world, completely unrelated to any external events that might reasonably make me feel 'down'.

I don't think it's necessarily helpful to try and exclude or segregate someone's depression as a different phenomenon to your own (they're just a bit down whereas I'm clinically depressed) based on a one-liner in a post on the internet.