It doesn't matter if he was a good programmer or just a decent one, because he's also a good engineer, a good salesperson, a good entrepreneur, etc.

Mf wrote a game when he was 12. Good exposure at early age.

To provide some additional context to this question, here is an excerpt from Elon Musk’s TED interview yesterday [1].

> I suppose that's certainly possible. I think there's maybe some value also from a technology standpoint, because I found it rewarding to spend all night programming computers, just by myself. I think most people don't enjoy typing strange symbols into a computer by themselves all night. They think that's not fun, but I thought it was. I really liked it. I would just program all night by myself and I found that be quite enjoyable. But I think that is not normal.

[1]: https://www.thestreet.com/markets/elon-musk-ted-talk

I watched that too and was similarly confused or suspicious. I had never considered him to be known as a great programmer. Was he, or is history getting revised a bit?

Also, I feel like many of us could also claim accurately to have stayed up writing code as young people - I don't know how much that means on it's own. I definitely did, but am in no way an exceptional programmer, anymore than a kid who played football after school would automatically be a football prodigy