Computers themselves are very pedantic, so we wouldn't be very good at using them if we weren't good at being technically correct. The compiler won't forgive you for missing a semicolon or mismatched parentheses.
So I strongly suspect that our programming ability is related to our capacity for being pedantic, as annoying as that may be socially.
I doubt one would get very far in any kind of serious debugging session without the ability to be pedantic. It doesn't mean we can't judge the time and place for it.
I never said that one caused the other, only that pedantry is necessary when writing correct computer programs.
Huge bugs can come from small mistakes. The bug that tripped up Colin and ended up as a story on HN a while back was nothing more than a missing ++ in his code. Yet that tiny mistake screwed up the security of his cryptography.
So I strongly suspect that our programming ability is related to our capacity for being pedantic, as annoying as that may be socially.