I don't think the issue is when people show passion for anything but if. I started playing guitar late in life, but it's a consuming passion of mine. I fell in love with programming early, and out of love with it during college. That's why I moved in a lateral field (product management) where the skills I learned are useful but it's not required of me to do something 10 hours per day that I really don't love. I love my current profession, I spend a lot of time privately to study and get better every day, I work on building my toolset of templates and a strong reference library. I think that's the important part, showing dedication to improvement.