They can't read music, but they can still make their hands move in repeatable patterns without thinking about each finger position, which I think is roughly the equivalent of implementing quicksort.

As someone who has played guitar on and off for years as a hobby, I'm shocked by how much harder it is than programming.

I can pick up almost any random codebase on GitHub, and as long as they use libraries and don't touch low level stuff, I can probably start working with it in 10 minutes to a day at most.

Then, I could leave that project for a year and be almost as productive as when I left. So much of the action is on the screen, not in the head, and there's no muscle memory required.

If any instrument was as easy as coding... I think a lot of coders might have music careers instead....

Who said anything about reading music?