Well, I did check into this as part of advanced study, and your doubts are misplaced - there is a real link/cross-sharing between music and language...because there's an observable link/cross-sharing between music and overall intellectual development. Here's a quick summary citing the study that I think I used in my own inquiry[1]:
Confirming the belief that the relationship between music and academic performance is positive, “researchers have found that music instruction actually enhances student achievement in areas outside music” (Kelstrom, 1998, para. 12). It is believed that “music develops critical thinking skills and improves skills in reading, writing, and math. Music develops and improves spatial intelligence, which transfers to high-level math and science. It develops perceptual skills necessary in many academic areas” (Kelstrom, 1998, para. 31-32). According to this study, music has a strong influence, because it produces and develops skills needed for many academic processes.
[1]http://www.kon.org/urc/v5/fujita.html
Personally, as both a musician, person who successfully learned a foreign language, and was, for a time, on a professional track to become a programmer, I can say that programming is very low on the totem pole. It is predominately mechanical in nature deriving from logic comprehension, compared to music, which is a highly expressive and dynamic format. Or, to put it another way, I've never seen a "collaborative jam session" in programming that wasn't anything but chaos, because the format simply doesn't allow for it. Programming is great to understand how machines work, but to build the machines, the mind should be expanded via music and the arts to enable practical creativity.