Spud Webb is only 5'6" tall. He played in the NBA for 13 years and won the 1986 slam dunk contest with a "180-degree reverse two-handed strawberry jam."
He was better than all the seven-feet-tall guys in that contest in 1986.
Assessing potential is hard. For example, one might assume that "height" is a phenotypical requirement for being an elite basketballer. But Webb proved that assumption is incorrect.
You'll likely make similar mistakes assessing your own potential. So why bother? Do what you love and let the chips fall where they may.
I met a guy one time who did what he loved for most of his life--he played the piano. Despite practicing for 8 hours a day for years, he still wasn't good enough to be a professional performer. (His situation is not uncommon, apparently). Now he's close to middle age, broke and bitter.
So yeah, let those chips fall where they may, unless they end up turning your life into shit.
PG's advice comes co mind: "Stay upwind". Playing basketball or the piano is not upwind, so it might be wise to forgo those things even if you love them.
I think the case you mention is more about having reasonable expectations than staying upwind.
If you're studying as a musician and targeting symphonic performance as a career goal, you need to realize that you're going into a field which maybe has a couple dozen job positions open up per year world wide. Being the 200th best clarinet player in the world, despite being statistically very impressive, means that you still won't be able to work as professional symphonic performer.
On the other hand, if you set that as a nice-to-have goal, but are fine working as a studio musician or teacher, it becomes a much more attainable goal.
Fortunately, as a software developer, even if you're only one of the top several thousand you have a pretty big chance of doing impressive stuff.
My sister is about to finish a degree in music from a decent conservatory, but I'm glad she decided to double major half-way through. She's very good, but she doesn't have what it takes to be competitive in a race for maybe a dozen open positions every year for her instrument.
We are discussing prediction of success. Noticing one or two characteristics thought to be shared by the successful is really quite useless; most people with those characteristics do not succeed.
Most tall people suck at basketball. Some elite basketball players are short. The fact that most elite basketball players are tall does not really help us write our basketball-success-prediction algorithm. People dedicate their careers to solving this problem. It is very hard.
Since this is hard and likely to yield garbage results anyway, and most likely only leads to worry, time-wasting and excuse-making don't bother with these thoughts. Instead, erase every doubt from your mind, get in the long boat, row west and find Valhalla. (Given Google somehow came up I had no choice but to bring Valhalla into the discussion.)
The average height of an NBA basketball players is over 6' 6''. This helps us with our predictors of success. Sure there are other variables, but knowing this is very helpful especially if you had never watched an NBA game before.
He was better than all the seven-feet-tall guys in that contest in 1986.
Assessing potential is hard. For example, one might assume that "height" is a phenotypical requirement for being an elite basketballer. But Webb proved that assumption is incorrect.
You'll likely make similar mistakes assessing your own potential. So why bother? Do what you love and let the chips fall where they may.