The ear player is the perfect analogy, but there's no reason why you can't go and learn music theory after the fact. In fact, it would help you to explain the music to others, and to see patterns. The power of giving a name to a thing is encapsulation and abstraction, so I would propose that an ear-player and an ear-programmer would be more likely to get stuck in the gutter of whatever they're doing and pigeonhole themselves.