

Ask HN: Why are so many programmers also musicians? - CloudOps42

What is the similarity between playing music and writing code?  It's not scientific, but it seems a huge percentage of my programming friends are also musicians.  What are your thoughts?
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Stormbringer
According to Hofstadter (no, not the guy from Big Bang Theory, the one that
wrote Godel Escher Bach, the eternal golden braid), it is because there are
strong links between music and maths, and there are also strong links between
programming and maths.

Which suggests a solution to the problem of interviews and hiring good
programmers. Take them to a Karaoke bar and get them plastered instead :D

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barrydahlberg
I can code, play a tune on guitar and tap out a rhythm but oh my, you do not
want to hear me sing. I'm not sure the maths carries over that far!

~~~
Stormbringer
I can sing but I don't play any instruments. Some people play guitar, but not
piano... your point?

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staunch
Because half the population considers themselves musicians and you're
succumbing to confirmation bias.

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haploid
Beautiful. This is the correct answer. I'm sure well over half the developed
world is currently "in a band".

My own anecdotal evidence shows no link at all between musicians and
developers.

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arctangent
There is a deep underlying relationship between mathematics and music:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_mathematics>

Computer programming is the practical application of a subset of mathematics,
so it stands to reason that programmers will tend to be interested in music.
(And, specifically, people who like writing code will also tend to like making
music.)

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bartonfink
I agree that the relationship is there, but I'm curious if there's any basis
for your claim that folks who write software will also tend to write music
instead of enjoying it in other ways.

~~~
arctangent
It's a purely genetic argument, based on the relationship between genotype and
phenotype:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotype-phenotype_distinction>

I might be stretching it a bit, but I think it's probably fine to assume that
people with innate abilities will express them in multiple similar ways.

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code
Might be just you and your group of friends. I know a lot of developers and
none are musicians. That isn't to say there isn't a correlation or that there
is one but most people tend to have friends with similar interest. That could
be why you're sending a trend amongst your friends that happen to exhibit
these two traits.

For example, among my friends, it seems common that most of the really good
hackers tend to code and be avid runners. I'm sure there's no real correlation
on that.

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mattm
I went to salsa dancing for about 1.5 years. Pretty much every guy there who
was a regular was either a programmer or an accountant. One day I asked my
teacher about this. She said it wasn't just limited to my city, all over the
world it's like this.

Her theory about why programmers tended to stay in dancing was that dancing is
just a series of patterns. Programmers are good at recognizing patterns so
dancing fits into the part of the brain that we are good at using.

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Geee
Maybe it's the passion to control a machine/instrument to create something ..
playing an instrument and coding is not that different in that sense. For me
personally, what drives me to either code or play an instrument, or compose
music, or create anything at all; it's very similar feeling. Also when you get
your program running, or learn to play something, you get the same rewarding
feeling.

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michaelpinto
It's the only way they can get girlfriends! /s

btw article of interest: [http://www.infoworld.com/t/education-and-skills/why-
are-so-m...](http://www.infoworld.com/t/education-and-skills/why-are-so-many-
geeks-also-musicians-574)

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daimyoyo
Both require spatial thinking. To imagine how notes come together to form
music isn't really that different from how lines of code create a program.
Although music gets you laid more, which is why it's more popular IMHO.

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zelandpanther
Well maybe because programming is logical so it develop left brain hemisphere
and music is one of activity that develop right brain hemisphere...so
combining that to makes a balance.

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bmelton
I like to create. I'm a developer who doesn't feel too bad about his own
design skills (even if they are quite obviously minimalist) - but I like to
create things.

It's funny, my biggest weakness is shared between all my creative 'abilities',
which is that I don't ever have the patience to 'learn' anything. I can
practice all day long, and indeed, I've created quite a few songs on guitar
that I'm proud of, but with the exception of a very few, I simply do not have
the patience to sit down and learn somebody else's song, played somebody
else's way.

(Oddly enough, this has RECENTLY changed slightly, in that I am doing my level
best to learn how to play Rodrigo y Gabriela's version of 'Stairway to
Heaven', which is, best I can figure, nigh impossible.)

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huwshimi
I've find this correlation is even higher for designers.

