I do some hobby programming for fun, but I don&#x27;t expect everyone I work with to do that. I do it for fun and wouldn&#x27;t otherwise. When I interview developers, I ask them about their hobbies in general. Sure, I throw in some technical questions depending on the position (usually language&#x2F;platform agnostic), but those aren&#x27;t the focus or the best way to hire to me. I want to know if they have an interest&#x2F;curiosity into how things work (problem solving&#x2F;debugging skills), can communicate effectively (can work as a team) and are passionate about something in their life (tells me they can focus on something when needed).<p>I follow up with questions about how they solved some difficult problem in their life (could be programming or could be just learning how to change their oil). I ask them how they came up with a solution and what they learned about it. I want to see if they learned enough from it to be able to explain it to me or anyone else in the interview.<p>Doing that gives me an idea of how their communication skills are. I want to gauge their problem solving and debugging skills during the interview, because I think almost anyone can be taught to be a better programmer, but it&#x27;s much harder to learn to be an exceptional troubleshooter&#x2F;problem solver and that tends to be a majority of what software developers do.