The debate is not really about whether you program in your spare time. It's a debate about whether you love programming. 1. People who love doing something ar

The debate is not really about whether you program in your spare time. It's a debate about whether you love programming. 1. People who love doing something are on average going to be much better at it than people who don't. 2. People who love something find a way to do it, meaning that programming in your spare time is a very strong indicator of whether you love programming. 3. Therefore, whether you program in your spare time is a very strong indicator of your programming skill. Whether you program in your spare time is a proxy for whether you love programming, which is a proxy for your programming skill. If this author has only coded for pleasure one time in his entire life, including college (!), then the probabilities say he's overwhelmingly likely to not be a very good programmer. Maybe he's the exception, I know nothing about him other than what's in my comment.