Happy Musicians - Coding Bootcamp Story 49 of 100

Scales are tilted towards musicians, as coders.

TL;DR: Musicians are vastly over-represented as successful coders, especially in a bootcamp where switching from another career is common.

Repetition? Yawn

Show me any kind of successful musician and I'll show you someone who is no stranger to reps. You just can't get there, without a ridiculous amount of drills and repetition. Doesn't work, in music.

But there's also a look that you get, when you explain to the new bootcamp student that they are going to have to live in muscle memory hell for a few months. Other students have no frame of reference, so you just get a blank or puzzled look. WUT?

Mention to a musician that it's all in the reps for the first few months, and you'll get that all knowing "Oh, OK, Got it."

Grammar

I mentioned the importance of grammar in coding last night in a checkin, and a student immediately recalled his university years in music, learning the intervals such as "Perfect Fifth" and "Major Third" and I'm thinking sure buddy, whatever that means.

The thing is, music is very structured, grammatically. And it is far from obvious, to those of us not exposed to the grammar.

That same musician spoke of going through the coursework and then supplementing it with web searches to explore grammatical coding lessons from other examples on the web. To him, the grammar was all about learning to recognize the patterns. Once he saw enough it was "OK, I'm there".

They'll Pay Me for This? Dude.

Then, there's the whole thing about expectations.

Musicians spend - quite literally - years paying others for the chance to work. Then, 1% might get a to work in an orchestra or something, where their spouses pay the bills and they make a little extra money for the household, as adults.

As coders, they are valued and compensated well - and the work is much more similar than you might imagine.

Moving data around doesn't seem like music, to you and me. Much of the same brain and muscle work, though.

Over-Represented in the Numbers

Then, there's the success rate. No comparison, there.

Not everybody in a coding bootcamp sticks with it long enough to get a job. This is where musicians far and away beat the numbers.

Not even one of them will cite their musical background as a major contributor. I know better, I've watched the student population come and go for years now.

Photo by Ronny Sison on Unsplash

Bonus Joke:

What's the difference between a banjo player and a large pizza?

A large pizza can feed a whole family.