Sadly true. If you haven't been practicing since before puberty, you will never be a professional classical performer.
But it's an exceptional and unusual field. Many professional non-classical musicians start much later, and still do okay - although it's a much more brutally selective field than software development.
Edit: I see no evidence that starting late makes it impossible to be a good developer, and plenty that an early start is irrelevant. Any reasonably intelligent graduate should be able to learn to be at least averagely competent at basic code grinding. It might take a few years, but there's nothing inherently magical about the process.
But it's an exceptional and unusual field. Many professional non-classical musicians start much later, and still do okay - although it's a much more brutally selective field than software development.
Edit: I see no evidence that starting late makes it impossible to be a good developer, and plenty that an early start is irrelevant. Any reasonably intelligent graduate should be able to learn to be at least averagely competent at basic code grinding. It might take a few years, but there's nothing inherently magical about the process.