Sure, music theory involves learning the "syntax" of music notation, the "semantics" of e.g. key and genre, and the "programming pearls" of common musical idioms like tritone substitutions. There are analogs.
But what distinguishes music theory is:
1. The language and notation is hundreds of years old. It's been with us in one form or another 200 times longer than COBOL has. Maybe longer.
2. You don't have the peculiar challenge of having to speak it in the very precise form that a computer requires of a programming language. The terminology and communication between musicians is much fuzzier than that, much more like a human language.
Sure, music theory involves learning the "syntax" of music notation, the "semantics" of e.g. key and genre, and the "programming pearls" of common musical idioms like tritone substitutions. There are analogs.
But what distinguishes music theory is:
1. The language and notation is hundreds of years old. It's been with us in one form or another 200 times longer than COBOL has. Maybe longer.
2. You don't have the peculiar challenge of having to speak it in the very precise form that a computer requires of a programming language. The terminology and communication between musicians is much fuzzier than that, much more like a human language.