Curiously, it seems to be mostly women who are good devs and yet didn't start until college. I'm not really sure what to make of that. Could be selection bias - since boys are encouraged to play with computers, most of the ones who will be any good at it started in grade school, while since girls have no such encouragement, even ones that are good at it may never have discovered that until college. Or it could be that all boys who are good at computers let it take over their life, and girls have many competing interests. Or it could that only girls have the discipline to become good at something without it becoming their life.
I'm constantly thinking of better ways to do something and find myself rewriting code from years ago. I have at least one "regular job" experience that taught me such behavior/attitude doesn't work well in a 9-5 business environment.
It is apparently possible to care about your work and yet still leave it at work - I know a few people that have managed it. I haven't had a whole lot of success myself.
That said, I think people knock 9-5 a little too much. Plenty of good developers like to do something else with their day as well, and find that they write better code and retain their passion if they maintain this balance. If you have a good work environment and can focus (admittedly a challenge between 9 and 5), you can get a tremendous amount done in eight hours.
You'd have to already have a personal interest in programming and be doing it on your own as a hobby.
Are there people who seriously just go to college for 4 years and learn coding like accounting and then just do a 9-5 job?
There are thousands of decent hackers out there, maybe just uptrain.