Ask HN: Why are so many programmers also musicians?
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?
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
My own anecdotal evidence shows no link at all between musicians and developers.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
btw article of interest: http://www.infoworld.com/t/education-and-skills/why-are-so-m...
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.)