I think programming actually requires linguistic skills. When you program you are actually writing in a language, and you have to respect it's syntax and structure.

Therefore I don't think it should be compared with math. Unless you are writing a program for a very specific scientific problem that requires the elaboration of a mathematical model.

Usually the computer does all the math, all you need to do is type the operations you need it to calculate.

I'm not saying they're completely unrelated, I just think linguistic skills are more relevant in most cases