Hobbyist Programmers?

I fail on interviews every single time, since 2004; therefore I gave up trying out of painful disappointment, it's just not worth it anymore.

I'm not the type of person that knows how to handle stressful tests or whiteboards during interviews.

I respond rapidly out of sheer panic and anxiety, but in reality I am a very slow thinker; I need my time to read something multiple times until I see the whole picture inside my mind, like literally!

9 out of 10 times I first design a whole visual pattern inside my head, test it with every possible combination to validate its logic, and then I implement it in code.

I had been like that since I was born, so...yeah.

I never liked theory or limited time to write tests or exams as I didn't have the time span to visualize my answers so I can express myself the best.

The least I can do is to use my time and keep my head spinning by using programming as leisure and learn new things or read advanced books on topics I'm interested in the most.

Us 'hobbyist' or 'amateur' programmers are very likely self-taught, and have another day-to-day profession. In my own case, I was a pharmacist and discovered computers in the 1970s via my radio/electronics hobby.

Consequently, all of my early computing was as a hobbyist in my learning-phase. Later on, when working at a hospital, I did actually do some 'professional computing' in COBOL, such as stock-control programs for the pharmacy itself as well as a smaller stock-control system for the hospital's main store.

Since retiring from pharmacy, I have reverted back to 'hobbyist' programming, although I also have some 'sorta professional' aspects in doing a couple of accounting packages for both our personal and a family-partnership's tax preparations over the years, originally in BASIC, then COBOL, and now using C and mysql.

I don't code professionally because I know I can't hack it at that level. I wouldn't want to code for 40+ hours/week, it would drive me mad.

I program insofar to make things on Raspberry Pi, manage my home automation tasks in Linux, although I'm sure professionals would label what I'm doing "scripting" in some instances.