Towle_,

Thank you for the followup. I'm not trying to do science here, just understand my own experience.

Regarding the correlation between musicians and programmers being the result of socioeconomic status, that doesn't match my experience. I had lots of high school friends from similar backgrounds, and very few of them became musicians.

My experience is that the brain "peculiarities" that dispose one for accomplishment in programming are the same structures that dispose one for accomplishment in music. I'd love to see what a scientist would make of this claim.