There are lots of people who just went to college for four years and then got jobs writing code. I didn't keep a track of many of them but none of the ones I know of turned out to be good at it.
I know a bunch of people at Google who started programming in college. I also knew a few people in college who started there and are now getting CS Ph.Ds.
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 jealous of anyone who can just "come home from work" and turn off their brain about coding and do it as a regular job.
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.
Do you really want to not care about the work you do? It's nice to be able to come home from work and not worry about work, but I wouldn't want to work on something that I wasn't interested in.
Dunno about the OP, but I'm worried about burnout. The road to being "world class" anything is longer than you can imagine, and it'd suck to get 10 years in and suddenly reach the point where I can't do this any more, no matter how much I used to like it, right when I would otherwise be a big success.
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.
When I was in college (this was in Australia) I honestly felt like I was one of the few who genuinely had a passion for programming. I met one or two other guys during those years who had a similar passion, but by in large it was the exception rather than the norm.
I've met lots and lots of programmers who have no personal interest in programming or computers. To them it's just a skill they've learnt well enough to get paid for. It's not a hobby or interest and certainly not a passion. It's just a job like any other.
I understand the spirit of your question, and I do agree: good developers are almost always drawn to programming beyond the minimum requirements of their university program or work.
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.