I'll add to this thread because I've managed to be a journalist (air force military journalism 1967-71) learned computer programming on the G.I. Bill (we programmers often refered to ourselves as hackers hijacking any code we could lay our hands on). Raised three kids (if that ain't pretty close to taxi hacking I don't know what is) and am an unreformed smoker (hack hack) .. so I guess that makes me a quadri-hacker... I don't care if the internet glossaries say a hacker is a cracker, I almost never hear cracker used in that context and the context I do hear it used in doesn't need repeating.

I also dabble in song writing and find I am somewhat obsessed with ryme and perfect meter (no real music training just school of Mel Bay). I'm not sure if meter is the right term but the lyrics have to fit the music timing really close or I don't think it's right. So maybe the journalism does tend to 'structure' the song writing fairly tightly.

One thing journalism and music do seem to have in common is that very few really get paid much to do it so you got to love it to stick with it. (Now let's see, have I covered all them W's?)