Couldn't agree more. Notch his success has nothing to do with being good at programming. It's about being creative and able to create good game play.

Because he programmed game play routines a lot and dealt with everything involved (i.e graphic rendering and such) more than the average Joe it looks like he is a good programmer because he just shakes it out live on some streaming website. Those concepts are language-agnostic and you can remember them.