Some thoughts about what crosses over:

One of the most unexpected things to me is how good I am at hitting deadlines. But it makes sense. As a musician, deadlines don't move. You're playing a concerto with an orchestra on such and such a day . . . that concert is going to happen whether you are ready or not. Your choices are to get up there and play like a badass or get up there and fail in front of a thousands of people. You learn that when you're 8, and it sticks with you. When I moved over to coding, I never thought twice about it. A deadline is a deadline. It doesn't move. That's a thing that's been consistently talked about in my career. I nail my deadlines. Not because of any magic about me as a programmer, just a mental inability to view those as flexible. I can see, however, that this would be a weakness for me if I were to get into management: I'm awfully impatient with people who don't hit deadlines.

Dealing with toxic environments. I read about brogrammers and silicon valley startups with all kinds of ego problems and sexism all the time. We all do. I've even worked for a startup or two that styled itself that way. I've never met anyone with the kind of ego that professional musicians have. Not all, mind you. It's been my experience that the best people in any field are quite kind and wonderful and humble. And the worst are the ones who are actually just mediocre. But there are tons of mediocre performers who have terrible sexist, racist, and generally toxic attitudes. I managed an orchestra while I was studying statistics after I dropped out of my music degree because it seemed like a good idea. I've never seen such a wretched hive of scum and villainy. As far as I'm concerned, even the most obnoxious of the party-boy, popped-collar, douchebag bros I've ever worked with are basically nothing compared to you run-of-the-mill regional orchestra player jerk.

Being willing to learn from anyone. There are many musicians (particularly string players) who subscribe to a certain philosophy of playing. All other methods of playing are ipso facto wrong. My best teacher is a violinist, Bruce Berg, who studied with Galamian, Gingold, and Dorothy DeLay. He did an undergrad, grad, and doctorate at the Julliard School. Where he claims to have learned very little (I doubt this is true). After finishing his doctorate, he went and studied with a Cellist--heresy!--named George Neikreug. What could a violinist with these credentials possibly have to learn from a Cellist? To this day, Bruce claims that he never actually learned to play the violin well until he studied with George. I've taken that same approach, (and I picked up a lot of George's techniques from Bruce), both in music and in technology, and I think it has served me well. Go to the dark side for advice some times. Go learn a language that you don't like. Go talk to people you don't think have anything to offer you. Go with an open mind and a warm heart. And a couple hundred bucks. Because people often charge money for their knowledge. But I've learned as much about programming from reading Marco Arment talk about how he does all his web apps in PHP because his needs are simple as I have learned from reading Eevee about how much PHP is a hammer with the claw part on both ends.

I could continue on about this just as much as the earlier topic. But I should probably shut it down. So I'll close with this:

Don't be afraid to contact big important people and ask them for help. I remember when I was just learning python, I was writing an extension for SPSS to do some statistical junk that we couldn't do with the interface as it existed. So I just went and wrote one that shouldn't have worked but did and emailed him the code and asked why it worked. I got completely schooled by a total master. It didn't really work. Slightly embarrassing, but since I didn't bring an ego to that situation, I learned a ton. John Peck is a really great guy.