When we get into this type of discusion in our interviews, what we are looking for is not literally are you coding between the hours of 6:00 -11:00 pm. We're trying to find out if are you passionate about software development. If you already have a job where you have the freedom to occasionally explore, or even better utilize, diverse and emerging technologies, then you don't really need to do so 'after hours'. On the other hand, if you've been doing Visual Basic for the last 12 years as your day job, we're going to want to see some tangible indication that you've at least been kicking the tires on some other technologies. If the hiring company literally requires hard evidence of contributions to public repositories, then it probably isn't the place for you (or me) and they are inevitably missing out on some great developers by casting to narrow a net.