You see gentlemen, people have a major misconception about what it takes to be an elite programmer. Some say its all about your level of skills, how many languages, libraries or frameworks do you know while some say it's about how fast you can code. All of it doesn't really take you to the elite level do they?.
To be an elite you need the right mindset, skills and Knowledge and most importantly to know software design patterns because when you write code you're not writing it for yourself because someday someone will come to implement a new feature but if your code is messy and unnecessarily complex he has to rewrite the entire thing and that's just an extra pain. “In programming, if someone tells you “you’re overcomplicating it,” they’re either 10 steps behind you or 10 steps ahead of you.” Being an elite is all about writing code that any casual programmer can understand but not necessarily implement, I can write a RegEx that will enable me to shorten a function to just one line but the possibility of it passing a code review is close to none.
Finally I would like to speak about continuous learning in programming, don't just be satisfied with learning html css or JavaScript, reach out for the unknown maybe learn a bit about blockchain development or machine learning possibly read an article about Complex system design, the main point here is to always keep improving yourself after all programming is for the consistent. That's all gentlemen and Keep on Coding.

NOTE: this is my own personal opinion you may comment on yours

An elite programmer should be able to understand any code that has been written by another programmer in the language he or she is comfortable with. Some requirements are so complete to write that only elite programmers can understand it.

I once worked on a SOLID principles project that has been around for years and those who have been on the project for years left me who was new person on the project, on my own to figure out how to reuse functionalities from it as it has become too convoluted over time due to design pattern being used.

There is a reason for having a good Bsc in computer science or software engineering as it will allow a programmer to quickly understand any code in the language he or she is familiar with.