I literally have Visual Studio open right now while I waste time messing about here, working on hobby game development code that will never see a game.
At the big tech co I learn a great deal and do a lot of programming during the day, and I now enjoy a healthier work/life balance and spend time on the rest of my life. I also don't have that same "break into the industry" need, which is very freeing.
If you're asking about doing personal coding projects outside of work then I only do that rarely. I do plenty of coding at work and generally want to decompress or do my own thing at home. Occasionally I'll try out a tutorial project or some small bit of learning, but that's typically it. If I wanted to seriously look for a new job I'd probably try to do something more.
How old/what phase of life were they in?
I find that, in general (anecdotally), this tends to slow down for most people as they age or advance in their careers.
In the beginning, we have time/energy, desire to learn/advance our skills. As these tendencies reduce over time, only the more hard-core/passionate remain.
So if say it's depends on this spectrum when asking knowledgeable programmers if they code at home. They might have already gone through that phase.
This hits home for me, Open Source development is mainly done by people who love it and work on projects after hours.
I personally enjoy working on small webapp ideas and libraries to hopefully help others with their projects. The smaller the project the more likely it will be completed, so that's preferred.
On the other hand I don’t think you need to code at home to be good. If you have a job with some freedom to learn stuff during the day that helps a lot.
These days I'm reading the little typer and there's a dependent type language named Pie in it. It's really a pleasant to read.
Things like this I probably no chance to learn and use at work for tens of years. So I have to do it off-work.
I have a hard time motivating myself to code after work if I think I won't be able to work on a project for at least a couple hours at a time. Its hard to do with a wife, friends, community stuff.
For me it seems to be more about seeing if I can do something I haven't done before, or if I can make something that I personally like, than trying to make something that anybody else would find particularly useful.
I'm making slow progress on one personal project that I use on a daily basis. It's small by the standards of bigcorp code but the value to me is large. Other than that I tinker around a little bit, start things with different languages or libraries.
Also I work remote so technically I write all of my code at home :P
Of course, this does not include stuff done during regular work hours when I do work from home.