Coding in your spare time

I build some small applications in my own time but my training and relaxation takes priority over them. Spending all evening coding after a full day at work is going to lead to fatigue and mistakes the next day. I don't agree with the American view that a real coder should have side projects on the go.

Used to do a bit when I was younger. Did a bit of Linux contributing and a few side projects.
Then I started to do a bit of contracting on the side which was much more lucrative than hobby projects.

But now I have a house and a girlfriend and I like a bit of sports and all I do these days are practical things like movie download processing batches or such.

Not enough time to work on all those interesting projects.
Plus I find once I cracked the difficult bit let it be the design or some particularly interesting implementation piece I lose interest and I don't bring things to an end where they may actually be useful or even of commercial interest.

I've coded since my early teens. I continued to do so as an adult before I entered IT - it actually almost didn't enter my mind to do so until I saw a job ad and thought "I actually do this for fun. And they want to pay someone to do it?"

When I went into IT, I realized that not everyone was like this. For some like me, it was something they did for fun. A hobby. For others it was the job. This is not to suggest that either was better than the other - although often 'different' - just that not everyone was the same. And of course, it wasn't black or white - there were lots of levels of 'coding in your spare time'; from once a year to every evening.

And as my career progressed I noticed that my 'hobby' also changed. In development roles, I'd be less likely to code at home on weekends. When in management roles, the reverse was true.

So I don't think there's a simple answer, but a lot of the time it comes down to whether coding is something you would feel the 'need' to do at home in the first place and also whether this 'need' is already filled by your professional life.

I think that (some) employers just like to see some indicator that you're enthusiastic about and interested in writing software. Contributions to open source projects is a pretty clear indicator and it's handy for them to be able to see your code, etc., too if they like. But I've seen others ask for personal projects, StackOverflow answers, forums that you contribute to, blogs that you read, etc. I don't think that coding in the evenings necessarily means anything—I've had experience of good and bad developers who do this—but I'd be skeptical of someone who doesn't take any interest in the industry outside of 9am–5pm.

I have other hobbies too, and a life, but I do usually have some sort of project on the go that I work on in the evenings or whenever I get a rush of inspiration (e.g. I randomly hacked together a new website between last night and this afternoon, and am currently waiting for the IEDR to approve my domain! ). One of the main reasons why I'm interested in programming, and why I'm happy I chose this career, is that I have lots of my own ideas and lots of things that I want to build, and so I find it empowering to be able to take an idea and at least build a prototype from start to finish. Hopefully some day I'll do a good one and end up making a living out of it. That's the dream!

As a side-benefit of working on personal projects, it does give me something to talk about during interviews, and I've spoken at length about them before. That's not the reason I do them though.

FWIW I've made no contributions to any open source projects. I've just never seen one that sticks out as particularly interesting (nor have I looked for one, though). I'm also a bit greedy, and so when I'm working on something I would be more often thinking "how can I turn this into a business?" rather than "how can I make the world a better place?" Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course.