The One Thing Programmers and Musicians Have In Common

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001214.html

by Oompa • 18 years ago

14 18 18 years ago

bpyne2• 18 years ago

About 15 years ago I was curious about the number of programmers I met who were also musicians. I wish I could remember fully the article I read at the time but IBM had a formal recruiting strategy for musicians sometime around the 50's-60's. The company recognized a relationship between musical and programming ability.

I'm going to speculate that it has something to do with musical composition being akin to software design.

Paul Hudak is another noteworthy person in the field who pursues music and makes it part of his research. His book "The Haskell School of Expression" teaches aspects of Haskell using music composition. As an aside, he also was involved in a new program at Yale called "Computing and the Arts" which looks like a heck of a program for developers with artistic leanings.

moswald• 18 years ago

As a musician and a developer, I can agree with most of this. I do however, see it as two opposite sides of a defined spectrum.

When I am playing an instrument, I typically lose any connection with thought or the rest of my body not directly involved in playing. My mouth sorta drops down and I begin to almost drool. Something my girlfriend loves to remind me of. I am literally lost in the music.

When coding, I am almost hyper aware of the thought process. I am surely focused on only what is happening relating to the code, but the disconnect from myself never happens.

I think the connection is the desire to create something and an inborn understanding of modularity and the flow of ideas/actions. People with these qualities are often drawn to both.

pavelludiq• 18 years ago

I love music. I never actually tried to learn any instrument, so i may buy a guitar this sumer and just have fun with it(i doubt its going to be any good).

From what i know about music, and other creative activities, i can say that programming has some similarities with the other creative arts, but it an entirely different art of its own. We can draw connections between all the arts, painting is like music, programing is like dancing, i can write a blog post on all of those, but they are still different arts.

Maybe knowing how to play doesn't make you a better programmer directly, maybe it does it indirectly by making you more creative in general. Those are my thoughts on the topic.

Avshalom• 18 years ago

Part of the problem with all the Programmers are the same as Foo comparisons is that programming styles are so numerous that any one can find similarities between their style and some hobby, it's just that no one ever compares it to say knitting, crochet, scrap booking, gardening, etc. because those all strike people as a step down in terms of "leading a meaningful life"

The only thing I can find in common with musicians is that both are incurable gadget nerds.

shaunxcode• 18 years ago

Totally, for instance as a drummer and a programmer I find myself comparing "drum patterns" and riffs as procedures, but particularly with drum patterns they can be re-used across bands/styles and songs even within the same record! So being a drummer is definitely about code re-use and modular design. I could go off on my project to generate recursive music (live) but thats a whole other world. I would like to think that I drum with s-expressions.

ken• 18 years ago

I think it's simpler than he proposes.

1. Everybody likes music

2. Music making is very accessible (offhand, I can't think of any condition which would prevent one from playing music at all)

3. If you have the dedication to get good at making programs, you also have the drive to get at least half-decent at making music

Result: good programmers tend to be musicians. Alan Kay was once a professional jazz guitarist; I don't find this coincidental.

The problem I have with music-anything analogies is that "music" covers such gigantic scope that you can make all kinds of generalizations about it, and they'll be true for some kind of music. Individualistic? Collaborative? High-tech? Low-tech? Intricate and exact? Improvised and free-form? Notated? Oral tradition? Hey, we've got that, too! My field is just like music!

baddox2• 18 years ago

But the same doesn't go for people with the dedication to get good at doing various other things, like cooking or cutting hair. Or does it?

msluyter• 18 years ago

Ex classical musician checking in. One other possibility that has been hinted at indirectly: many good musicians are rather introverted (singers being the notable exception). You have to be -- or at least not be overly extroverted -- in order to lock yourself in a practice room for many hours a day. It's often lonely. This thus makes musicians temperamentally suited to be programmers.

Scriptor• 18 years ago

I used to play the violin for my high school orchestra. I wasn't great, and I often wondered how professionals could practice for hours on end. Now I realize that it may very well be asked how I could sit in front of a computer programming for hours on end.

bpyne2• 18 years ago

It's just a matter of finding something you love to do and it won't feel like a chore.

In college, I was in a 1 credit small jazz combo that met every Friday from 3-4. After the instructor left at 4, we'd whip out songs we wrote and would start jamming. Often it was 7 before I looked at the time.

I read an interview with a famous Chen Tai Chi stylist a few years ago. He recalled practicing 12 hours daily for a few years in his youth. He didn't talk about it like work, he just got a thrill out of every moment.

nx• 18 years ago

I find it easy to express myself through music and relax a bit when my head is full of binary trees.

zupatol2• 18 years ago

My first job was in a small software company where all programmers worked part-time. Their interests outside the job were varied widely. One wrote software for chimney sweepers, another published a chess fanzine, there was a coach of an athletics team and I make comics. But yes, there also was one musician.

jcl• 18 years ago

Pardon my curiousity, but what did the "software for chimney sweepers" do?

zupatol2• 17 years ago

I think it had something to do with the paperwork specific to their trade.

SteveC• 18 years ago

Long hair and beards?

martythemaniak• 18 years ago

I've often wondered how much of this "Programming is like playing music" is true, and how much of it shit we make up to make ourselves look better. I mean, musicians are much cooler in the popular psyche than programmers.

I play a bit of guitar and I can think up of all sorts of seemingly valid comparisons, but I don't if they're just too general to draw any conclusions from. After all, many of these are just as applicable to something like photography (another thing that seems common amongst programmer types)

One thing I can say for sure is that true or not, you can use these musician/programmer analogies to impress girls, who'll start to think of you as the "creative type" many say they like ;)

msg• 18 years ago

Being a programmer is like being a garbage collector. You drive a huge truck, don't mind noxious odors, make frequent stops, you lift heavy things, your job is extremely monotonous, and you get paid better than teachers.

The parallels are really much closer to the arts than they are to the service sector.

baddox2• 18 years ago

That's a sweet Meinl Byzance ride he's got in the youtube vid.

The One Thing Programmers and Musicians Have In Common

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