[braabe]

I agree on this, but I believe the comment was aimed more at the "Tinker-Attitude" that many STEM-People have. And I believe many other professions have this to an extend: I'd imagine that many journalists and authors enjoy reading in their spare time. Every mechanic I know has a cellar full of half-finished machines he fiddles with in the evening.

I don't have the energy to code on private projects for eight hours after eight hours of coding at work (besides occasionally enjoying not sitting in front of a monitor...). But every once in a while it bites me to blow 10 hours of tinkering on some strange useless problem, like simulating Logic-Gates with basic arithmetic.