It’s a shame you did not reference Morton Subotnik http://www.mortonsubotnick.com/about.html and his Silver Apples of the Moon album…
I have heard many times over my career that mathematics, music, and intellect have a direct correlation. The answer to the question clearly lies in neuroscience.
Some anecdotals:
Those of us who are parents are aware of the whole baby Einstein thing where Mozart makes your kid smarter. There was a similar study that suggested listening to randomly sorted music tracks (both classical and rock were used with equal results) over the duration of the day temporarily increased the listener’s IQ and problem solving abilities.
In addition to being a musician and a programmer, I am a classically trained artist, and I find all three tasks to be satisfying in very similar ways. - I’ve also noted that if I’m doing well in one of these areas I am less inclined to entertain myself in the others, presumably because I’ve already met some internal need. - There’s a programmer management book that points this out, although the name escapes me. It might be a Beck/XP thing.
While we’re on the subject of hobby correlation, let’s find out what percentage of developers are also unusually fond of Lego…
I think I’ve noticed a few patterns too!
Most programmers I know enjoy eating. I’ve personally observed them do it at least once a day since I started at this job.
I’ve also noticed that programmers are all about clothes. Since I got started in this business, I’ve never seen a coder arrive at work naked. Wild huh?
Harry Nilsson was a computer programmer at a bank in the late 1960s until he was discovered by the Beatles and became famous with hits like Coconut, Without You, and Me and My Arrow.
Also, CD Baby’s Derek Sivers wrote about the similarities for O’Reilly: http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/05/programming_is_like_songwritin.html
Dude, I was a programmer that started with Code Complete, and then I heard OK Computer for the first time a couple of years ago. I started playing guitar before I was a programmer though. Coincidence!?
Seriously, though, they were both seminal experiences. I still remember exactly where I was the first time I heard Exit Music, coming off the highway and getting the shivers from You can laugh…
There is a world-building parallel between CS, physics/hard science, and music. In physics research, you work within the constraints of the physical world and draw out novel effects by looking at the world from a new theoretical perspective. In music, the rules of the world are acoustics and human perception, and the dimensions are instruments, found sounds, voice, tone, volume, rhythm, etc. In CS, you make up more of the rules, but more often you specialize and work within a certain genre like user experience, languages, or algorithms.
There are plenty of professions that don’t build worlds, like finance, manual labor, the service professions, manufacturing (except for engineering/design), etc. It’s mostly the artists, scientists, and engineers, just like GEB said.
A very interesting community supporting this point is the Monome Community ( http://www.monome.org ). Its an open source device which allows for programming on a number of platforms. Some of the software that has come out of there is amazing.
A professional tenor I know once put it simply as: Music is mathematics.
Let’s be practical: musicians become programmers, generally not the other way around, simply because those gigs actually pay the bills.
What about Jonathan Coulton (www.jonathancoulton.com)? He went from being a code Monkey to full time musician.
I’m also a (now semi) professional musician and a programmer. I think this correlation has to do with the fact that both skills require using both the left and right sides of the brain…
My favorite anecdote about being a developer and a musician… When I went to college between 1980-1984 my mother; while always very supportive - strongly encouraged me not to become a music major so that I would have something to fall back on because the music business is so unstable. (Her brother was a very successful musician - he played bass for The Pointer Sisters as well as once backing up John Coltrane when Jimmy Garrison was in Chicago and had the flu)…
I took advantage of the .COM boom in 1998 by quitting my Day Job and consulting part-time from home while pursuing music full-time. When the bubble burst - (in 2001) I wasn’t able to find any programming work for about 10 months. But I had enough gigs lined up to keep myself in the black financially.
I loved to rub it in with my mom The computer field is so unreliable, it’s good that I have trombone playing to fall back on…
When the music winter slump (I live in Chicago) of January-February hit - I went back to full-time working as a programmer in 2002
For me, getting in the groove is a lot easier with coding than with music. Composing music requires a little extra creative spark (or maybe it’s just a stroke of luck) that’s sometimes there and sometimes not; whereas with programming, it’s much more goal-oriented which makes it easier to make a little progress at a time even if I’m not in the groove.
I was going to weigh in, being a semiprofessional musician and professional (theoretically) programmer, nigh onto 28 years now. But Jamie Phelps already made my point above. (It’s a shame one can’t automatically quote an existing message…)
I think that musical ability and programming correspond but it’s
because of the ability to recognize structures and hold them in
one’s head. The same thing applies to linguistics.
I got started in programming because a friend who worked on Wall Street at the time said You like to solve puzzle, right? Then you’d like programming.
He was a writer and thought writers made good programmers. In college, a CS professor told me that musicians made good programmers. Abstracting, I came to hold the idea that those good at processing symbols make good programmers.
However, not all musicians can BECOME programmers. For years I nudged my son, musically astute, to try programming. He took a VB course in high school but never really got into it. I’m guessing he never really had an interest in it.
In music as in programming, there’s more to being successful than potential or raw talent.
For a moment there, I thought this post was going to flow into a passionate declaration of love and admiration for Wii Music…
I’m a coder by trade and my girlfriend is a musician, she can use use a computer but is no technical wiz and I can play a bit of guitar but nothing great. I don’t think there’s any particular link between the talents or aptitudes.
As many people have said, programmers love of music is explained by this being common in general amongst all people. Also a LOT of people play an instrument or at one time were in a band, the law of averages says a certain amount of coders will be former musicians and vice versa.
You’re the best, Jess. You nailed the missing link between musicians and (the best) programmers. Rock on!!
I work for a music company, most (hmm make that all) of the people here are musical. developers make up about 1%. Although we are pretty musical, I’m more of the opinion (as stated earlier) that music is just a human attribute it’s something everyone loves and you’re back to your 10,000 hours, which do you practice the most and yeah both require that same level of commitment and overlapping skills.
With cool/geek music tools like Tenori-on as well I think we’ll be doing more music anyway 
I have to disagree with Jeff,resent blog post by Jeff and their titles and content are confusing and meant to do nothing but just for the sake of his blog on software development.THIS COMPARISON OR WHAT EVER SUCKS.PEOPLE WRITING SYSTEM PROGRAMS HARDLY COMPARE WITH MUSICIANS AND WELL PROGRAMMERS HAVE NO LIFE
Um, I’m a programmer, and I’m a graphical artist, with little musical skill, so I have to agree that Hackers are like Artists, not musicians…
So the commonality isn’t in the process of creating music or code, nor is it in the requisite skills. Quite simply, we’re both willing to create a product that will live or die not by its merits but by its sex appeal.
As a side note, to link Programming to the Arts:
Paul Graham has always been using the Programmers are like painters analogy. Since that was his side interests.
I’ve always said that creating quality code is an art, that must be mastered. Evey object/thread you are using at a time must be orchestrated in perfect unison to create that beautiful result that we love.
Paul Graham’s Hackers Painters
http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp/0596006624
Just because you can’t play music doesn’t mean you can’t hear it. Being able to hear it allows you to appreciate on some level its complexities.