What bill is talking about programmers at MS or any big company like facebook, google etc just like super start sports person or musician, but in general there are lots of requirement of programmers who don't need to those kind of super programming skill but programming with business value.

Comparing programming with sports is not a good idea because you are comparing super start sport person with avg programmers.

Even in sports or other fields there are people who were avg or above avg sport person but latter they become great coach .

So it is quite subjective. If your heart say you can become programmer and you are doing enough for the same and you are improving day by day then you are on right track.

In my view just writing code is defiantly not going to make good programmer. Code, understanding end user and domain is going to make you better software maker.