I fit the bill. There are obviously similarities: music notation is a formal language like programming languages. When you read notation, you can pretty quickly

I fit the bill. There are obviously similarities: music notation is a formal language like programming languages. When you read notation, you can pretty quickly grasp certain relationships and substructures within the piece. With jazz notation especially you can quickly figure out what the general strategy of the piece is and once you’ve got an ear for how it works, you can theorize or write little melodies or complementary bits just from sight alone. I would also say that the obvious impact of the ear and/or the tools you’re using to play music make it very different than programming. Without the knowing how you would actually play a piece of music, it can be difficult to visualize or interpret notation, whereas code is pretty straightforward in how it’s made or what it actually does. The “feel” is really abstract and interacting with the piece is more akin to observing a running system than it is to touching code.