I actually respect more programmers who do other things on their spare time. Cooking, traveling, photographing, sports, volunteer work... Doing other things add knowledge, build character and improve your level of happiness.
It's important to be open-minded and possess a large array of skills. Specialization is overrated, an invention from industrial era. Ideally, everybody should be a da Vinci.
I don't understand why this is either/or. Life is long. It's possible to write code for fun AND race motorcycles, travel the world, cure meats, play soccer, sail boats, read books, etc...
It's important to be open-minded and possess a large array of skills. Specialization is overrated, an invention from industrial era. Ideally, everybody should be a da Vinci.