A lot do. A quick look at my "projects" folder shows 12 different projects. My snippets and quickies and tests folders have hundreds of files. Various accounts at github, googlecode, etc contain more projects publicly available. The src folders of various machines contain projects for work, or OSS projects with code I've modified for experimenting. This is the result of many years of coding, prolly the last 15 or so.  It should be noted that almost all of them are in some state of abandonment. All of them are incomplete.  Most don't even work to their intended purpose, they just exist as attempts to understand various concepts.<p>I do not consider myself atypical in this.  Most coders I know, at least those who are passionate about their work, are similar. No matter where you stand on the "hackers and painters" thing, it should be acknowledged that in this respect both are similar.  Most painters have hundreds of test canvasses lying around, with stuff that will never be seen by the world -- it is how they hone thier skills.<p>I think "nerd-dom" in general has lots of people like this. The arduino crowd all have lots of toys. The steampunk kids are the same. Looking over to the nerdier bits of shop class is not much different -- seems like everyone makes a paintball tank these days (and to get to that level usually is by route of a shop full of failed experiments, potato cannons, a home-made scooter, and so on)