It is far from a myth. If it was a myth, salaries wouldn't be increasing so much, while the number of developers also increase. The demand for developers exceeds the supply so much that this is possible.

Do you know any other major industry, where people with little or no formal training can get in and up so fast? Where people in their early or mid twenties routinely make 6 figures? I don't.

The median salary is now above 100,000. https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...

That's roughly on par with chemical engineers but whereas (almost) all chemical engineers have at least a bachelor's degree, an increasing amount of software developers have no other training than online courses and still make salaries that would make other professionals with 4-5-10 years of education envious.

I love online courses, but try get a job as a chemical engineer (or any other engineering job) with just some online courses. As a software engineer that would only be an issue with some of the most sought after places, like Google.

Yes, I am sure there are a few thousand petroleum engineers in Texas and other niches that make more than software engineers, but generally, engineers make less.