Yeah, I agree with this. Been contemplating whether to invest time in learning RoR for a while now, though I've also been using ASP.NET for over a decade now, and leaving the Microsoft ecosystem would be a drastic change for me.
I've tried doing this by practicing NodeJS lately... But it looks like I need to publish code in GitHub to prove that I'm not a charlatan. It's rough doing that in addition to a job and a side project though
Why don't you find a way to work Node into your side project? If you modularize what you build in node nicely, you can break it out into its own repo and post it. :)
Also, I personally take advantage of failed side projects from the past by open sourcing them. Really helps in interviews!
Yea I'll find a way of doing that ultimately. The last thing I wrote in Node was for internal use for the company I work for. No way of putting that on GitHub!