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.
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.
The only thing I subjectively see in the value of music is the lengthy amount of time that the formalism of it's language has survived. Otherwise I typically listen to the same songs on repeat until they have turned into a drone like noise for me to block out the rest of the noise in the world. Sometimes I do appreciate variation in music, and I have spent a lot of time devoted to studying classical music. But still, a particularly well known sonata might as well be a recursively constructed formalism of white noise to me, because that is how I remember the piece. It is beautiful in that regard, but I just do not consider myself educated enough in music to understand anything about it otherwise.
I find code and mathematics to be much more delicate, intricate, fundamental; to my own personal comprehension. I remember playing the piano a couple of times to think about how a computer might experience the progression of it's thoughts. The thing with creativity is it has no walls.
> because there's an observable link/cross-sharing between music and overall intellectual development.
No, you've totally missed the point, I'm afraid.
There is a correlation between participating in musical extracurricular activities and intellectual development. There is also a correlation between learning new languages and intellectual development.
This does not mean that languages and music have anything in common other than that choosing to participate requires the kind of mindset that is statistically more likely to result in increased intellectual development.
It does not mean that being musical makes you better at learning languages. It means that if you are the type of person who is musical, you are likely to also be the type of person who learns languages well.
The link you provided (and the study it cites) agrees with this claim of mine, but you cited it as if it would refute it.
> I've never seen a "collaborative jam session" in programming that wasn't anything but chaos
I've been a part of very organized hackathons.
In fact, I've been to hackathons that blow away any jazz I've heard in terms of artistic merit by my judgement.
Perhaps you're making the confusion of meaning "coding" when you say programming. Coding is indeed a very rote and chaotic medium. I'd hesitate to call it art.
Programming and computer science, much like pure math, are artforms of themselves which surpass any other art humanity knows.
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.