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