> He also put himself into a position where it was possible to get superbly lucky

That reminds me of a story where a professional golfer took a year off for practicing, no tournaments or other distractions. After that, on his first tournament he started with hole-in-one.

A journalist asked him "surely that must have been luck? Nobody can reliably train a hole-in one", upon which the golfer answered "Yes, it was luck. But the more I train, the luckier I get".

I always loved this answer, because it contains a deep truth: must people who seem to be "lucky" really worked hard, and then had luck too. None of our rich programming idols seems lazy to me.

P.S. I have no idea if the story with the golfer actually happened, or if it's fiction; I can't remember any sources.