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by purpledove 5719 days ago
Please see Dennis M. Ritchie's short bio: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bigbio1st.html

He has deep mathematical talent.

Ken Thompson also has deep analytical abilities as demonstrated by his contributions to computer chess: https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Ken+Thompson

Guido van Rossum holds a master's degree in Math and CS.

I'd say that it is common sense that mathematical talent is correlated with coding talent provided that the person receive substantial training in coding. Generally speaking, everyone is a terrible coder for the first 2 years, it doesn't matter if you are a math genius, you still need to learn how to crank out good code.

The real question is: is there extra correlation between math talent and programming talent beyond both being correlated with g, the general intelligence factor.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor