It is a reasonably good advice. After all there is plenty of programming work that does not require ever learning how does quicksort work or what is a mutex. Accessible to nearly anyone with increased intelligence.

Definitely ROTFL! Let's take the most mind numbingly boring thing possible, cross it with something that takes ridiculous amounts of concentration, add a dash of "no normal personal will ever understand what you are doing" and top it off with "all your colleagues are idiots and you spend most of your day arguing about minutia, while they simultaneously complain about the same thing with respect to you". Every year, no matter how much money you make, your justification for a raise is, "If I'm going to put up with this crap, they're going to have to pay me a lot more than this!"

If you become a programmer for any reason other than passion, you are either very naive or very courageous.