[tombert]

I have no idea if I am considered "young" (32), but I taught a few classes over the last few semesters to students who were unambiguously young, and I can definitely say that young people coding for fun are definitely out there.

A few students of mine would show me little games they were working on, or websites they were building. Sure, they might be doing this a bit for resume-fuel, but it was abundantly obvious to me that they were doing these things largely because they thought it was cool.

And you know what? It is cool! I tried my best to encourage them to keep at it.

[moffkalast]

The "it's for the resume" is a convenient excuse when people ask you why are you spending hundreds of hours on something that seems pointless but is fun to code.

[vulcan01]

Anecdotally true: when my non-technically-inclined parents ask me why I'm working on my personal projects, I vaguely mumble something about "it'll be good for my resume" and try to change the topic.

I definitely do not think these will benefit my resume in any way.

[franciscop]

Yeah exactly when "normal" people ask me why I contribute to open source now I tend to mumble something like that, career professional development blabla. When I was at university I would say something like "learning/practice programming", though back then most of my classmates spent their time playing LOL/DOTA/etc, so if I wanted to program for fun no one would care really.