The best programmers I know

The best programmer and the best Linux wizard I knew had absolutely no background in CS, he stumbled into programming in this 20ies because he had to develop a tool for his Master thesis in a completely unrelated field (agriculture). He then quickly taught himself Java, Python, C++, JavaScript, PHP, and PostgreSQL scripting. By his early 30ies he was the established senior developer at the company I worked back then. He was very strong and quick in non-algorithmic programming tasks, but I also often marveled the naivete with which he approached algorithmic tasks: he would google around for a day, and then find out about standard undergraduate CS algorithms, would then get very excited about them, and quickly implement his own version.

Sometimes all you need is passion.

I feel like the way universities teach data structures and algorithms isn't a great way to instill the joy of problem solving.

That being said, not everyone has that spark. And you can always lose it.